HUTCHINSON HEINEMANN
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To the many Afghans who welcomed me into their hearts and homes, who trusted me with their stories, who still dare to dream big – for themselves, their families, their country.
Preface
‘How long will you be staying?’ asked the man behind the black marble counter. I didn’t know the answer. It was Christmas 1988, the day after my thirtieth birthday, and the gloam of the Inter-Continental Kabul was an unlikely place to be celebrating. The cavernous lobby, chilly and dark, stretched into forbidding corners, brightened solely by a shiny blue-and-white banner promoting the Soviet airline Aeroflot. Most of the chandeliers, their dangling crystals hushed by dust, were dark; only one glinted stoically above the reception desk. But the wooden grid of pigeonholes behind the front counter, packed with chunky metal keys, left little doubt. Almost no one else was staying here. Would it be six days or six weeks? I wrestled with all the forces that might keep me in this ghostly place and all the ones that might not. An awkward pause pressed down upon me and the Afghan receptionist, his brown suit as gloomy as the lobby. He raised a quizzical eyebrow. And then he smiled, his welcome illuminating the room.
I had just landed in Kabul for the first time. The spiralling descent into one of the world’s highest capitals stuns its visitors into an awed silence. Sharp undulating ridges of rock puckered in folds of black, grey and a rusty red had given way to the sharp, snowy-white peaks of the Hindu Kush. Far below, the latticed landscape of miniature mud houses was dotted with flat-roofed factories and domed palaces and mosques that loomed ever larger. It was no ordinary arrival. The aircraft had
banked sharply in a breathtaking corkscrew manoeuvre, flares bursting outwards with white-hot fire – a way to divert any heatseeking missiles blasting from mountain bunkers, the foxholes of the Western-funded rebel fighters known as the mujahideen who were locked in battle with the Soviet-backed government in Kabul.
That winter, the harshest in more than a decade, Kabul was in the crosshairs of a Cold War conflict that was decades old. Afghanistan’s unravelling had begun in 1973, four years after the Inter-Continental Kabul’s grand opening, when its mildmannered King Zahir Shah had been toppled by his cousin. The putsch soon tipped Afghanistan into a blood-soaked spiral: another coup, three leaders assassinated one after the other, then the Soviet invasion over the Christmas of 1979, which sparked what would become the most grievous war in the world.
I had travelled to the Afghan capital to report on the Red Army’s pull-out, following a disastrous decade-long occupation. As I departed from neighbouring Pakistan, where I had spent the past few months, one mujahideen commander cheerily told me he would soon see me in Kabul, since their victory was now in sight. Another warned that I would certainly be killed there.
I had been nudged out of Pakistan by a competitive colleague who had made it clear that I should find a different patch. The kindness of strangers and friends had helped to secure me an escape route: a rare Afghan visa. The advice had been that there were really only two places to stay. The older, more conveniently located Kabul Hotel – smack in the centre, but with dubious communications and cuisine, and an even murkier history. And the Inter-Continental – high on a hill on the edge of the city, but with better telephone and telex links and food worth eating, as well as a certain faded splendour. As the clapped-out yellow taxi
x
chugged out of the airport in a fug of diesel fuel, I made a splitsecond decision. We headed for the hill.
I soon discovered that hospitality is hard-wired in Afghans. At the front desk, Sharif, with his sunbeam smile, and Salem, his dour sidekick, were a delightful double act, offering assistance with a wink, as spooks of the Soviet-backed ruling party lurked. Amanullah, at room service, scribbled caricatures of journalists on food bills to bring some cheer to the bleak bedrooms – a very Afghan vision of ‘service with a smile’. Nasir, the telephone operator, offered Dari-language lessons during anxious waits for a telephone line in that once-upon-a-time before the ease of the internet and mobile phones. His impromptu class started with learning the phrase dostad daram. I soon found out it means ‘I love you’. As so often among Afghans, the gift was laughter.
I ended up staying nearly a year. The hotel became my Afghan home. The masking tape criss-crossing my windows offered scant protection from rocket fire, but looked the part. Carpets from merchants who always lent their wares before demanding a purchase – a tactic honed through history, to all but ensure a sale – provided a personal touch. As the Soviet troop withdrawal on 15 February 1989 approached, the InterContinental started bursting with journalists who came and went, until the hotel echoed with emptiness again.
Over the decades, when returning to Kabul to report on momentous times, I have often stayed in the place that everyone called simply ‘the Inter-Con’. And, over time, I came to realise it was more than just a hotel. As Afghanistan lurched through decades of trial and terror, laced with bright but brief beginnings, the Inter-Con was an unbreakable constant. A white box of cement and steel, it stands on a hill watching over the city, a front-row seat to history. On its roof, its kicking letter K still proclaims its pedigree – even though its connection to the global
xi
Inter-Continental chain was severed soon after Soviet tanks rumbled into the capital in 1979. Afghans stubbornly held on to the name, in the hope of restoring its early glory and membership in that coveted club. It never gave in, never gave up; the Inter-Con is a very Afghan hotel.
Its brutalist exterior lacks the graceful arches and elegant domes of the city’s historical royal palaces. But what was born in 1969 as the finest hotel in Kabul became its most storied building. History – good, bad and bloody – was made within its walls. It became home to fashion shows and beauty pageants, bikinis by the pool, vodka-soaked Soviet receptions, warlord rockets, a guest named Osama Bin Laden, American election observers, Afghan female MP s and Taliban suicide bombers. Its doors stayed open through every kind of political system: a peaceable kingdom, Soviet-backed communism, warlordism, Islamism and a would-be democracy bankrolled by the West. Politics, like hotel guests, checked in and out. Whoever rules Afghanistan sets the rules at the Inter-Con. Today it is run by the Taliban, again.
In a listing of the world’s finest hotels, some sparkle for the elegance of their architecture, their exquisite cuisine, the standards of their service. The Hotel Inter-Continental Kabul, Afghanistan’s first five-star luxury hotel, earned a distinction of its own. It survived. At times guests cursed it as the ‘worst hotel in the world’ – a place without running water, reliable heating or even bread that could pass a taste test. Bedrooms became bunkers. Chandeliers shattered. Floors were ravaged, renovated, ravaged and renovated again. In a land where most Afghans worried whether they would see their next meal or their next day, the Inter-Con was a constant. Through moments of heart-rending uncertainty and suffering its receptionists kept smiling, waiters kept serving, cooks kept pots on the boil, cleaners snapped
sheets across beds, bellboys kept lugging luggage up and down the stairs when the lifts were broken or the electricity was cut. The hotel became their misl-e khana – like their own home.
History always moves in a multitude of singular stories that carry far bigger truths. Afghanistan’s story tells us that war is more than the blast of bombs, the whistle of bullets. It’s a mother’s anxious eyes, the song of a soldier, a soul-soothing camaraderie, the pause before going out the door. It plays out on the frontlines of everyday life, in dashed dreams, wrecked weddings and the courage of people who hold each other close and do what they can to carry on.
This book is a history of Afghanistan told through the story of this landmark hotel, and through the lives of the staff who kept it going. Most Afghans, when asked for old photographs or videos, reply apologetically that they lost almost all their physical keepsakes during one upheaval or another. But I have always marvelled at their memory. Perhaps when so much is snatched away by forces beyond their control, remembering becomes a weapon to hold fast to the past. But memories can blur, take a new shape in each telling. This book is based on recollections of the many Afghans and foreigners who have gone in and out of the Inter-Con. I have listened carefully to their accounts, checked translations, and backed up their stories, as far as possible, by historical records. Every effort has been made to tell their story faithfully, as they told it to me. At moments in this book you will also read my own stories too.
It is written with enormous gratitude for the many Afghans, over many years, who have made me feel at home. For all that’s been lost, Afghans’ deeply ingrained sense of hospitality still remains. Of all the country’s many proverbs, one has always been my favourite: ‘It doesn’t matter how big your home is, what matters is how big your heart is.’
xiii Preface
Introduction
The Year of Reckoning
Summer 2021
It was no way for a young man to spend a Saturday night in Kabul. Sadeq had been quietly considering his options. He could have joined his friends at their favourite hangout, the Nokhbagan snooker club, home to the best tables in the city. His friends kept calling him, pleading, ‘Come on! Sadeq jaan , you work too hard.’ Or he could have hung on in the hotel after his shift ended, to get his head around more English grammar. He needed it for the language tests that could speed up his long-awaited exit to study in the United States. Perhaps he should have gone home. He could hear his father’s caution ringing in his ears: ‘Don’t stay out late, my son. It’s too dangerous these days.’ But as the lengthening shadows began to dance with the shine of the chandeliers, the hotel’s humanresources manager burst into Sadeq’s cubbyhole office and threw a sheet of paper on his desk. ‘Sign here. You’re in charge.’
Sadeq’s decision was made for him. There was no one else to look after the Inter-Con tonight. Only the sharp dresser with the megawatt smile. He had risen to the role of acting
front-office manager less than two years previously, at twenty years old, just under a fortnight into the job. It was, Sadeq believed, down to his sheer force of personality and prodigious effort. True, his big brother Hasib had put in a good word. But he did the rest.
He looked down the list that was staring up at him. There was the wedding getting under way down by the pool: about 240 guests. Some of them would certainly linger, dine, dance into the early hours. Then there was another wedding in the ballroom in the morning. Both were in the safe hands of banquet manager Sadozai. He’d been around this hotel for more than thirty years; he knew what to do. There was a sprinkling of guests across the hotel’s five floors, some of them now browsing the buffet in the Bukhara Restaurant. And if he tugged open the curtain of his snug glass-fronted office he was certain to see two of his colleagues, also twenty-something strivers, sitting calmly behind the reception desk, probably scrolling on their mobile phones under the gold-rimmed clocks that marked the time in Dubai, London, New York, Paris and Kabul. He could do this.
His only worry was security. His role demanded a laser focus on the Inter-Con’s three rings of steel. Afghan media was burning with reports that the Taliban were advancing towards Kabul at lightning speed. The US president, Joe Biden, was still vowing to bring every American soldier home by the date seared in everyone’s memory: 11 September. Every other NATO army was packing up after twenty long years, if they hadn’t left already. But the stories from the frontlines were mind-bending. That Afghan soldiers were running out of bullets, even running out of bread. That entire units were cursing their commanders, fleeing for their lives. In some places Taliban fighters were said to be simply walking in, taking over.
But a Taliban conquest of Kabul? Impossible, Sadeq told himself again, as he tucked his hotel checklist into the pocket of his best blue suit. Not when this capital was defended like a citadel. Not when the powerful Afghan army, still backed by US and British troops for a few more weeks, was standing strong. And not when the fortress-like Western embassies still hadn’t pulled up their drawbridges. He saw the formidable security at the US compound every time he went to check on the status of the visa applications for himself, his father and three sisters to join their mother and brothers, who were already in America. Not even a pigeon could fly in undetected.
Sadeq leaned back in his chair, just short of the point of completely tipping over. Mood music from the ‘3 Hours Best Romantic Relaxing Music’ playlist was wafting under his door. Sometimes he asked why God had decided to make him an Afghan. So much kept getting in his way. He was at the stage of life when a young man should be well on his way to his future. By the time he was twenty-seven, when so many responsibilities and maybe even marriage kicked in, his chance to make his dreams come true would be over. Only five years to go. And here he was, stuck in the starting blocks.
He pushed away from his desk, stepping into the luminous lobby and out of the revolving front door; the balmy August night was washed by the magic of a half-moon. As Sadeq took the steps down to the lower terrace he walked into a nocturnal fairyland. A sweeping canopy of twinkling lights was mirrored in the glimmering pool. Sequins winked on women’s dresses as they shimmied to the wedding band, the flashes of phone cameras and cascades of laughter adding even more sparkle. On the rim of the oblong pool, a singer with a mop of slickedback hair was belting out the lyrics of Ahmad Zahir, the ‘Elvis of Afghanistan’:
The Fines T h o T el in Kabul
‘Although my spring has turned to autumn because of your absence, why should I fear?
Oh flower! May you always possess the spring of youth, may no autumn befall you.’
Sadeq half-listened as he looked around, noticing that only a small number of guests still dawdled around the titanic buffet table on the far side of the terrace. Ahmad Zahir’s laments were bringing the event trickling to a close: From above, the rain came. My beloved entered the hallway. I asked for a kiss . . . O woe, her eyes filled with tears.
Ahmad Zahir’s songs weren’t Sadeq’s favourites. But how Afghans still loved, still missed, their great star. He had performed and partied around this very pool five decades previously. He had been killed – most Afghans believed assassinated – in 1979. But his music and his memory would never die.
Sadeq tripped back up the stairs. The outer rim of the watchtowers, nestled in dense thickets of evergreens, hugged the hillside, the highest lookout straddling the rocky knoll that faced the front entrance. Another cordon of razor wire shadowed the wall around the hotel. The third stretched from the bottom of the hill to the top on the main lane. Along the way it passed three striped barricades; three boxy guard cabins; two electronic scanners; two possible pat-downs; and a heavy steel slab of a gate on the crest of the hill stretching across the entry to the forecourt. And there was a fourth, of a sort: the thick arboreal fence formed of tall pines, elegant Persian and Russian willows and flowering fruit trees, lining both sides of the path.
This hotel had been the domain of the trees long before the arrival of all this metal, the pines rising high and straight like watchtowers. The elegant spherical shrubs called Pasha Khana, ‘mosquitoes’ houses’, were there to catch insects. And on the
fringes of the forecourt and down by the pool, the graceful acacias rustling with the faintest of breezes. The gardeners who lovingly tended them by day Afghanised their name to akst, ‘photograph’. They saw everything, just like the multiple banks of security cameras across the hotel.
Sadeq circled around the splashing fountain, festooned like a Christmas tree with garlands of tiny bright lanterns. On the far side of the forecourt, inside the ballroom’s golden double doors, trusted Sadozai and his waiters were putting the finishing touches to another wedding layout. ‘Shab Bakhair,’ Sadeq called out. ‘A good night to you.’ All was in order. Of course. Round tables were covered in white tablecloths embossed with tiny white flowers. Straight-backed chairs were dressed up in folds of red fabric pinched into a bow at the back. And, at the far end of the ballroom, the regal thrones of the bride and groom were draped in white sashes.
Sadeq admired honest, hard-working staff like Sadozai. They were the real cement and steel of the Inter-Con. But he could not stomach the thought that he too would be here in thirty years, still riding a bicycle back and forth to work. Still, this was a good job, he reminded himself, as he slipped back into his office and shut the door with a reassuring click. And it made good sense for someone studying for a business degree, down at the American University of Afghanistan. Some day he would run his own company.
His eyes wandered to his walls. When he looked straight ahead, he faced an impressive Afghan snow leopard, the rare big cat that was able to cross the largest of rivers, swim the coldest of waters. Behind him were painted silhouettes of the Chapandaz, mighty Afghan horsemen galloping across the steppe in a frenzied game of buzkashi, a rough-and-tumble Afghan version of polo. This, too, was what it meant to be an Afghan.
The Fines
And at his feet, on the floor beside his desk, were his new finds. The spiralling horns of a Marco Polo sheep, a trophy dating back to the days of the last king, Zahir Shah, who had loved to hunt, but tried to protect these precious animals. Next to it, a finely engraved round plaque with a K dancing at its centre, wreathed by the words ‘Inter-Continental Hotels’. Hotel heirlooms – Sadeq had dug them out of the dusty jumble in one of the outhouses behind the ballroom, in his efforts to unearth this hotel’s history and put it on show for everyone to admire. The flaring horns would be mounted above the entrance to the coffee shop.
He leaned back in his chair. The past week had been stressful. The hotel’s new managers had fired 160 people – about half of the hotel’s staff, including some of its longest-serving, most loyal employees. It had been a painful week. But the office of the president of Afghanistan had been categorical: ‘This hotel isn’t even making enough money to pay its electricity bills!’
So much of Sadeq’s time was spent trying to bring in more business. In the spring he had escorted security teams from embassies and aid agencies around the hotel, so that they could inspect the reinforced defences – his attempt to reassure them it was safe to stay. His old general manager, who had also just been sacked, had even revealed to Sadeq that he was rekindling the hope to rejoin the global luxury hotel group, after all these decades. The Inter-Continental’s head office in Britain hadn’t even answered his emails, but the manager wasn’t sure if he had the right address.
The hotel had been a no-go for most foreigners since the bloody Taliban assault of 2018. Entire floors had been shredded. Forty guests had been shot dead or blown up, fourteen of them foreigners. The Taliban were warning Afghans to stay away from dens frequented by infidels and enemies, like this one. But
it was Afghans who kept coming. And there were many here tonight.
It was a little past 3 a.m. Within hours all the well-rehearsed steps of another day at the Inter-Con would begin again. Sadeq made one last stop to chat with his fellow twenty-somethings behind the front desk and exchange final greetings. Khoda Hafiz. ‘May God protect you.’ Manda na bashi. ‘May you not be tired.’ He picked up one of the brand-new electronic keys to access the lifts. He had reached the end of his list, the end of his energy. All the gates were checked, all the main doors locked. The last of the wedding guests had vroomed down the hill, their voices carried in the quiet of the dark. Only the distant rumble of US military aircraft powering in and out of Kabul’s international airport broke the silence. That and the staccato barks of stray dogs, the kings of the night, reclaiming their streets.
Sadeq fell into bed in a third-floor room, out like a light, safe on the other side of its heavy door. Every door of the Inter-Con was bulletproof.
‘Don’t watch the news!’ Abida’s doctor told her, over and over again. ‘The news is making you sick.’
That was the hardest prescription to follow. Abida obediently took the doctor’s pills for high blood pressure, diabetes, tummy ache and more. She swallowed a rainbow of colours for her assortment of aches. But she had to watch the news. She couldn’t fall sleep until she saw the late-evening bulletin. And, even then, she was still sometimes jolted wide awake in the middle of the night. At fifty-five, Abida lived her life in a haze of worry. Fear for the future of her eight children. Grief for her lost husband, killed by a rocket decades earlier. And now, since exactly one week ago, anxiety over her own fate after she had lost her job as a sous-chef at the Inter-Continental.
The Fines T h o T el in Kabul
Abida shoved all these thoughts to the back of her mind as she reclined on her red-and-gold toshak mattress, a mug of steaming green tea in her hands.
‘Salaam. Welcome to the News at Ten.’ The TOLO news anchor Waheed Ahmadi was in Abida’s mud-and-timber home again. The deep-set eyes on her TV screen were so dark and intense that he seemed to be staring directly at her. Pay attention! ‘Our top headline, some important news.’ Abida leaned in; Ahmadi’s bushy black moustache curled at its tips as he spoke: ‘President Ashraf Ghani is consulting Afghan and international partners to prevent further instability in the country.’
Ghani was her president. She had voted for him in 2014, and again in 2019. Her whole family had. She told them to. And she was sure they heeded their mother’s word. Abida wriggled into a more comfortable position, listening attentively. The screen cut to her president, addressing the entire nation: ‘I know you are worried about your present and your future,’ he said. ‘As the president, I assure you that my focus is to prevent further instability, violence and displacement of my people.’
Abida sank into the soft, squishy cushions; she had embroidered them herself. All her worries somersaulted in her mind. Her future, and that of her family, hung in the balance. The Inter-Con’s, too. A team of her fellow hotel workers, the oldest and wisest men, had been meeting the president’s legal advisors today to argue their case of unfair dismissal and to demand compensation: 160 of them had been let go, in one fell swoop. Hotel managers had apologised. ‘These are the president’s orders,’ they told her. My president has done this? she asked herself. They kept repeating the same refrain: ‘We are so sorry, but there is no money.’ They said they had done it according to the rules.
But Abida had only found out last Saturday, as she trudged up the hill to the hotel. An angry knot of her colleagues, including
four women from housekeeping and laundry, had been halted at the second security gate. ‘Let us through. We work here!’ they shouted. The guard waved a long list of names in their long faces. ‘Look! You no longer work here.’
Abida held onto the hope that she could get her job back. But now the Taliban were said to be at the gates of Kabul, back at the door of her life. And here was her president on TV, dressed in a dark blazer, crisp white turban and a Covid mask, walking solemnly down the long red carpet outside the presidential palace as if there was nothing to worry about.
The news report switched to him looking straight into the camera reassuringly, his turban now removed. ‘Security forces will be consolidated and serious measures will be taken.’ Abida kept watching, now breathing a little easier. At least their security was in safe hands.
Her tea was now lukewarm. She sipped the last dregs. The next report was all the way from New York and the leader of the United Nations, the secretary-general, Mr António Guterres. ‘Afghanistan is spinning out of control and facing an unbelievable catastrophe,’ he declared.
Abida gasped, her heart tightening in her chest, exactly the way her doctor had warned her. She couldn’t bear to watch. When the Taliban had taken power in 1996, she had been forced to leave her first job as a cook in the Kabul Hotel in the city centre. Afghan women were told they couldn’t work outside their homes; their place was in the house. It had been one of the worst days of her life. Then, five years later, came one of her best days. She had pressed her radio set to her ear, so as not to miss a single word on Kabul Radio from her new leader, Hamid Karzai, who had taken over from the Taliban. ‘We respect Afghan women, who are half of our country’s population,’ he said, the applause that was erupting from the radio
The Fines T h o T el in Kabul competing with its crackle. ‘And we give rights to them under the country’s law.’
Abida Nazeri – chef, seamstress, widow, mother of eight children – had been the first woman to sign up for a job at one of the government-owned hotels. She had dazzled the InterCon’s new foreign managers with her mouth-watering Afghan dumplings. They had never tasted mantu and ashak before; had never even heard of them. They gushed over the plump pockets of pasta stuffed with oniony Afghan leeks and finely chopped meat and onions, smothered in a velvety garlicky yogurt sauce. She was hired on the spot.
Last week, the day she was sacked, had been another of her darkest days. Abida had never imagined it would happen to her. Not in a hotel where they respectfully called her Madar jaan, ‘dear mother’.
She admitted that her aches and pains told her loudly every day that she had worked too long, too hard, for too many years. Her doe-eyes were now ringed with dark circles, crinkled at their corners. But when she applied a touch of pink lipstick, perfectly matching her favourite headscarf, she still shone a finelooking smile. And how she could cook! Only months ago she had received the hotel’s ‘Star Performer for the Month. In recognition of her Valuable Contribution.’ They gave her a certificate in a gilded frame. A golden star-pin she fixed to her chef’s whites. Even a week’s extra salary.
But last week one of the managers had belittled her with his dark eyes. ‘Dear mother, isn’t it time for you to go home and spend time with your children, and grandchildren?’ The hotel she had loved for so long no longer loved her in return. How could she pay the fees for her son, studying dentistry at a private university? Who would pay the medical bills for her daughter, Mariam, who had studied journalism, but had suffered for years
with tumours in her ovary? This had been Abida’s life’s real work: an illiterate mother educating all her children. She had come so far. And now it felt as if her past was in hot pursuit. The Taliban could be coming back to take it all away.
Abida cradled her empty teacup. Her hands looked older, too, calloused from years of cooking and sewing. The Taliban were promising they had changed. Their leaders kept telling journalists they would govern differently this time. She had to believe this was true. Otherwise she was sure she’d be struck down by a stroke.
The last TOLO news bulletin of the night was almost over. The final story was about the United States providing 500 million doses of the coronavirus vaccine to poorer countries. It was good to end with good news. The camera cut to a wide view of TOLO ’s grand studio, with its vivid red desk and pulsing blue backdrop. Waheed Ahmadi sat in the distance, his eyes no longer in close focus, as he signed off.
‘Thank you for joining us for this hour’s news. Good night.’
The morning of 15 August began with the dawn call to prayer bouncing from one hill to the next, the first light filtering through the beige smog sitting stubbornly on top of the city. Mohammad Aqa made his way to work in a dust-caked commuter minibus in the tangle of morning traffic and the racket of the streets: the blaring horns of luxury bulletproof 4x4s, the revving roar of motorcycles, the tinny tinkling of bicycle bells, the hapless shouts of the traffic cops with their outsized peaked caps.
His shift began at 7 a.m. He hopped off at his usual stop at the bottom of the hill to make his way up the slope, through the gauntlet of bollards and barriers and through the roll call of obligatory courtesies. Salaam Salaam . . . Sobh Bakhair, ‘Good morning . . How are you? How is your health? May you not be
tired.’ By the time he reached his staff locker in the basement, he was a bit tired in fact. He swiftly changed into his black trousers, slipped into his white shirt, tightly knotted his black tie and pulled on his black jacket. The manager of the Bukhara Restaurant was ready to work.
Mohammad Aqa stood behind the waiter’s cabinet at the entrance. He hadn’t expected much footfall; so few guests were checking into the Inter-Con these days. But today no one at all had shown up for breakfast. The thunderous silence was jarring. He kept his eyes peeled for the Afghan family who had been staying at the hotel for so long they were no longer allowed to eat there, such was the thumping bill they had run up.
His eyes roamed across the modern forest-green chairs that covered the marble floor. The young waiters, dressed in brightly bordered black waistcoats, sprang from table to table – setting cutlery in straight lines, dropping tissue boxes with golden InterContinental branding with a soft thud. Everyone knew what they had to do. A warm summer’s sun seeped through the curtains cloaking the floor-to-ceiling windows.
He let out a wistful sigh. How he missed the balcony. It had been removed when the hotel was renovated a decade ago, after the last suicide bombings, to make space for more guests. With it had gone a slice of his hotel, his favourite spot since he started work here as a teenage busboy decades ago. On unsettling days like this he could have slipped outside, inhaled deep gulps of fresh air, smiled at the swallows, gazed at the teeming city below and the sharp white peaks of the Hindu Kush beyond. Instead he stayed rooted in place like a potted plant, behind the scuffed waiter’s cabinet – the restaurant’s last keepsake from the king’s days when this hotel had first opened. And, to Mohammad Aqa’s great relief, he was still holding onto the most important thing of all: his job. Not all his old colleagues had been so lucky.
At 9 a.m. waiters unlocked the golden double doors of the grand Kandahar Ballroom at the end of the long corridor that ran perpendicular to the restaurant. The first to arrive was the DJ , Nabila, dressed in a bright-turquoise tunic and trendy black jeans that matched her black headscarf. Her nine-year-old son tagged along in his own skinny jeans. They threaded around the white-cloaked tables, heading straight to the far corner next to the stage where her equipment sat. Sadozai, the banquet manager, was moving through the hall too, standing tall in his hotel uniform, his badge of authority. Back on the job after his late night, his run-of-show was in hand: 150 guests confirmed; 180 could show up. A mixed wedding. Men and women would celebrate together. Most Afghan weddings separated them into adjacent rooms, even separate buildings. But marriages were becoming more modern these days. Just like Afghanistan itself. Sadozai ran through the details of the wedding lunch. Special Afghan dumplings, three salads, sheep stew, degi kebabs, lamb karahi. Of course qabuli pulao, the national dish of rice and meat speckled with sweet raisins and thin slivers of almonds and carrots. A chalow rice, special ferni rice pudding, one bottle of water and one Fanta soft drink per person and, of course, green tea and black. And flat rounds of steaming Afghan bread. Every meal had to have bread.
A small wedding, by Afghan standards. But small didn’t mean cheap, especially at this hotel. Kabul was awash with money these days, at least for the lucky. Such were the spoils of two decades of Western armies and embassies, aid agencies with big budgets, fat salaries, eye-watering contracts, hard work and ingenuity – as well as, it had to be said, corruption. No expense was spared on weddings. And no venue matched the prestige of this historic hotel. Not even the glittering wedding halls that kept popping up across the city, bathed in blinking lights and
with names like Dubai City, Star Palace and Kabul Star. Sadozai took one last look around his golden hall, decorated with ruched red curtains and faux opera boxes. Not his style, but the guests seemed to like it.
By 10 a.m. they started trickling in. Women in figure-hugging dresses swaying on stiletto heels, others in patterned shawls. Men in dark suits jazzed up with colourful ties. Little boys with black bow ties and girls in frilly pink, skipping excitedly around the tables. Everyone clutching presents wrapped in shiny foil, and an assortment of bags bulging with more modest scarves and shoes to change into when they left this wedding bubble.
The clack of heels and murmur of voices filled the lobby, too. Mohammad Aqa poked his head around the door with a smile. Everyone loved a wedding. He knew that, from his own days in charge of the ballroom. The last major renovation had transformed the main banquet hall into a fussy pastiche of a theatre, dripping in chandeliers. The Kandahar Ballroom. This had always been its name, to honour Afghanistan’s storied second city to the south, its eighteenth-century capital. It had a different ring now, though. Kandahar’s modern claim to fame was as the spiritual heartland of the Taliban.
Lunch hours loomed. It was time to bring in the bowls of salads and plates of sweets to prepare the buffet spread. But not a single diner had set foot inside the restaurant. Mohammad Aqa nodded to his waiters who were nervously hanging about, obsessively checking their mobile phones for the latest news and messages. He pulled his own phone from his suit pocket and was met by a waterfall of detail. The Taliban had been spotted in Wardak, the apple-growing province to the west, just beyond the gates of Kabul; and in Charasiab, several miles to the south. There were even sightings in Kampani; and that was even closer.
He stared blankly into the middle distance. Most Afghans were dumbfounded. ‘How could the Taliban return to power?’ they kept exclaiming. ‘It’s unimaginable!’ Mohammad Aqa could imagine it. It didn’t weigh quite so heavily on his mind. He had worked with them in the 1990s when they were last in power, when they ran this hotel and everything else. But now he had three precious daughters, in high school and university. ‘Will the Taliban allow us to be educated?’ they kept asking him. ‘That’s what they’re promising,’ he kept reassuring them, as best he could.
He played idly with a napkin, his fingers smoothing and folding the cloth. This first waiter’s skill was one he still knew by heart: Lay the white square of fabric on the table. Fold it to form a rectangle. Hold the short side and fold it again to make a pleat. Press down firmly to make a sharp crease. Keep folding to create an accordion of pleats. Today it felt like folding his worries away into the fabric.
Down the corridor the wedding was beginning. The hall had filled with the bouncy beat of the wedding march, Ahesta Bero : ‘Walk slowly, my light of night, go slowly . . . ’ The bride and groom made their entrance. She was glowing in her Gande dress, elaborately embroidered in seven brilliant colours. He walked beside her in his traditional waistcoat, tunic and billowing trousers. Family members held the holy Quran above their heads while guests ushered the couple forward with showers of kisses, rose petals and clapping.
Sadozai watched with a knowing smile. It was always a relief when a wedding got going. He checked his run- of- show again: 150 guests confirmed; 180 could show up . He looked at his watch. It was late morning, not too long until lunch. But hardly anyone was in the hall. Perhaps about sixty people so far, at most.
The wedding show had to go on. Nabila spun her disks, playing Qataghani music of longing and love. The familiar tunes tugged couples onto the dance floor, some rushing up to the DJ to request their favourites. Soon the honeyed voice of Aryana Sayeed, Afghan pop star and women’s activist, was ramping up the vibe: ‘In your pure heart I see a clean light, in your gaze I see a world of modesty, I see you as the best of God’s creations, I am so happy that you are always only mine . . . ’
Onstage the henna ceremony – the ‘blessings on the skin’ – was beginning. Rich red dye was painted on the bride’s hands, the intricate hatching gradually morphing into swirls of flowers and vines. Tradition said that the darker the stain, the deeper the love.
The bride and groom stared into each other’s eyes. But their love couldn’t stop their gaze from occasionally darting across their wedding party and all the empty tables. And most guests weren’t looking back at them. They were looking at their phones, at each other, frantically trying to reach loved ones at work, children at school.
Sadozai took a deep breath and straightened his shoulders. He moved in to eavesdrop on the tables, which were ablaze with worry. ‘The Taliban are in Wardak and Kampani . . . No, no, they’re already in Kabul, in the district next to the hotel . . The rest of my family aren’t coming to the wedding, they’re too afraid to leave the house . . . What should we do?’
Sadozai swallowed. He summoned the full force of his authority, the weight of three decades of wedding service. ‘Nothing will happen,’ he insisted in his warm, grandfatherly voice. ‘This is a wedding! You are all safe . . . Even if the Taliban come, they won’t hurt you. We are all Muslims.’
From the corner of his eye, through the open doors, he spotted a clutch of men in the corridor in taupe perahan o
tunban, traditional clothing, with chequered scarves partially hiding their faces. He froze. Were the Taliban here? Relief washed over him. It was only the hotel’s own security guards. But they had changed out of their uniforms. That was worrying, in its own way.
He looked towards the stage. The bride had now changed into her emerald dress and veil: green to symbolise purity and happiness, the second of three wedding dresses that brides wear on their special day. But even thick layers of beige and pink powder couldn’t hide her trepidation. She was trembling on her wedding throne.
A family elder appeared at his elbow. ‘You should serve the food now,’ he insisted. Sadozai checked his watch. It was only 11.30. And the ballroom wasn’t full. Only about eighty guests. ‘Serve it now,’ the elder hissed. ‘No one else will come.’
In the kitchen, situated between the ballroom and the Bukhara Restaurant, there was a sudden clatter of pots and pans. Mohammad Aqa heard it. Everyone did. He went to check on the commotion. ‘We need to serve the wedding lunch,’ banquet waiters shouted. ‘Now!’ Preparations lurched into fast-forward. Staff scurried about, pulling salad bowls from fridges, slamming serving plates on steel counters. Chefs in white toques plunged their biggest spoons into huge cauldrons of steaming rice. This had never happened before. But there wasn’t the time to discuss it.
Mohammad Aqa returned to his refuge in the restaurant. His waiters roved around the room, straightening knives and forks for the umpteenth time, tweaking the tips of folded napkins, but most of all checking their phones. Mohammad Aqa instructed them to start preparing the oil burners to heat the serving pans for lunch. He paced the floor. Down the hall, the mood in the ballroom was now veering
The Fines T h o T el in Kabul
wildly between optimism and alarm. ‘Look at this message on Twitter from the presidential palace,’ one person shouted. ‘It says there have been sporadic shootings in Kabul, but the situation is under control.’ There was a Taliban statement, too, ordering its fighters to ‘Stay at the city’s gates. Don’t enter Kabul.’ Phones vibrated with stories from the streets. ‘My cousin spotted some Taliban outside his house – they’re hearing gunfire.’ In the corner the DJ was on edge, too, balancing her phone in one hand and mixing music with the other. Her husband had been trying to call, but the phone signal was weak, the lines clogged. ‘I’m coming to get you,’ he finally told her. But he warned her that the streets were gridlocked. ‘It may take a while.’
Sadozai kept checking the stage. The bride was sobbing. ‘The Taliban are going to come and kill us,’ she wailed. Sadozai, banquet manager turned consoler-in-chief, hastened to her side, his own eyes beginning to moisten. ‘The Taliban are Muslim and you’re Muslim, too,’ he whispered. ‘They would never harm you in your wedding dress.’ He invoked an Afghan tradition from centuries past, handed down by the modernising King Amanullah and his wife Queen Soraya. ‘On your wedding day, you are the Queen, and your husband is King,’ he reminded her. He stole a glance at the groom, whose face was drained of colour. ‘Comfort your bride!’ Sadozai chided him. ‘If you don’t show courage today, you will always disappoint her.’ And so the groom did.
The parade of plates was now in full swing. The scent of steaming rice and meat, the clink of cutlery on crockery, the service as smooth as a marble floor helped restore Sadozai’s sense of self. But it didn’t last long. A scream drowned out the soundtrack of lunch. ‘There’s a Taliban pickup on this hill. Their white flag is on the roof!’ The music juddered to a stop. ‘It’s
not true!’ came a rival cry. But it was too late; the room was in havoc. The DJ rushed to the nearest table, begging for someone to share something long and loose for her to cover up. Women yanked voluminous shawls out of carryalls. Men shouted into their phones trying to find out what was happening.
Sadozai’s heart pounded so hard he feared his shirt would rip. What if a guest had a heart attack? What if he did? At the main entrance to the ballroom, next to the double doors, Zahir the cleaner, in a purple tunic, held fast to his broom. ‘There are no Taliban in the hotel,’ he kept repeating, over and over again, to anyone who would listen. ‘And if there are, the Taliban are Afghan, too.’ But no one had time to hear. Everyone was grabbing their bags and their children, pelting from the ballroom, tumbling into their cars, speeding down the hill.
The groom leapt from the stage, his inconsolable bride in her glittering green dress in tow. They swept past tables covered in plates of untouched food, clumps of rice and shiny drink cans strewn across the floor, and bolted out of the door. The last outfit of her special day, her pure-white wedding dress gleaming with dreams, still hung on its hanger in her bridal changing room.
Sadozai stood dutifully at the double door, a rictus grin on his face, until the very last guest had left. He stood as tall and straight as he could.
It wasn’t even 1 p.m. His shift didn’t end until three. He scuttled to the lobby, which was buzzing with a congregation of managers and receptionists, waiters, busboys and bellboys, cleaners and cooks. Everyone was asking about the latest, demanding their salary, no one knowing what the next day – or even the next hour – would bring. Even the security guards were now inside. He spotted Hashmat, who had been here as long as he had, starting out as a teenage bellboy, anxiously pacing the
The Fines T h o T el in Kabul lobby. Young Sadeq was darting to and fro, gathering all the female staff to help them get home.
Mohammad Aqa stood silently at the entrance to the restaurant, sheltering in the quiet on the edge of this din. No one had eaten lunch in the Bukhara. Not a single person had turned up. The feast was going cold under metal lids and coverings of clingfilm. And then there was the wedding that wasn’t. All that wonderful food going to waste. The story reached them that the bride had fled in tears, that she hadn’t even worn her white dress. He shook his head in sorrow.
His eyes roved the restaurant again. He was relieved that Malalai, with her bright-yellow headscarf and sunshine smile, wasn’t on shift today. The other waiters’ eyes and ears were stuck to their phones.
Kabul is surrounded – that’s what everyone was saying. It was the last domino. One after another the biggest cities had all fallen. It had only taken ten days. He could hear a crackle of gunfire rising from somewhere on the streets.
Hazrat sat at home, waiting. He had summoned his children who were in Kabul to sit with him. Four of his sons, his three daughters and their children encircled the seventy-yearold patriarch. Other family members were calling in from Germany.
He had just slipped back inside the safety of their compact brick home, still unfinished. He carried news from their neighbourhood mosque, where he had conferred with other elders; their world seemed to be shifting beneath their feet. Shops on their street were shuttered. Rifles popped not far away. Taliban fighters were said to be close by.
Hazrat was stunned. His day had begun so happily. He had risen with the sun for morning prayers, bracing green tea, warm
fresh bread, watani eggs with tomatoes, and the scrumptious taste of victory. ‘We won!’ he had announced to his family yesterday afternoon when he bounced through the door after his meetings at the government offices. His delegation, representing all the employees fired from the Inter-Continental, had argued the case for compensation. They were owed six months’ salary, not the paltry three months offered by the hotel, which no one was convinced they would ever see. The light of the blue sky had been in his eyes.
His greatest worry had been how he would keep supporting the education of his youngest son, Samir, particularly in the sports he loved so much – exactly as Hazrat had done in his youth, in a Kabul boxing club, so long ago. As day broke, the summer’s sun streaming through his windows, he had felt a tingling sense of celebration. A heavy weight had been lifted from his shoulders.
His reverie had been punctured by a commotion on the main street that ran past their door, not long after daybreak. From their first-floor windows they could see a large crowd forming at the roundabout they called Pharmacy Square. The family could feel the gathering disquiet. Hazrat sent his sons out to investigate. They returned with startling news: the Taliban had freed all the prisoners. Some were now running amok. One of the escapees had made a beeline to the house of a soldier nearby and had shot him dead in cold blood. The word on the street was that the victim might have been a prison guard who had mistreated him.
Hazrat quietly absorbed this dramatic turn. He drew his loved ones close. All of this had been compartmentalised at the back of his mind while he tried to remain focused on his hotel. But the past always came surging back. This time he had tried to keep it at bay, lest it sap his spirit. Now all the questions were
rushing at him. Would the Taliban share power with the government they had been meeting in peace talks? Would there be another bloodbath? Who would now sort their hotel compensation? It was a moment of a thousand questions with no answers. He knew he would get through it, though. ‘Whoever is the donkey, we are his dress’ was the proverb Hazrat had always lived by. He had worked with everyone who took charge, took over the reins of the Inter-Continental – royals, communists, warlords, Taliban, wannabe democrats. His job was always to serve.
A glimmer of hope stirred within him, too. If the Taliban returned to the hotel, they might ask him to return, too. They would need him. They must know that. Possibilities started taking shape. For a moment it helped ease his seething anger. Not only had his life’s work been ripped away from him last week. His honour had been too, stamped on by the fine leather shoes of government officials with graduate degrees from foreign countries. People who thought they knew everything, but knew nothing about him and his work. They kept saying it was the decision of the president, Ashraf Ghani, who knew all about finance and planning. Was it really his decision or that of those new hotel managers? Hazrat wondered.
A half-century of service. This hotel had been like his own home. Agha Sahib, the ‘honourable master’ – that’s what they had called him on the hill.
Even as the Taliban closed in on the city, the greatest assault on Hazrat came from his own memories. He had been trained by the experts when the Inter-Continental Kabul had been one of the finest hotels in the world. He knew everything there was to know about running a hotel. He had all his papers to prove it. His Certificate of Special Merit in 1978 from the head office of the global chain, praising his ‘outstanding entry on what makes
a great hotel’. The commendation of the communists who took over the hotel and had promoted him ‘to advance the high goals of the victorious Saur Revolution’. Even a note from the current order, the Republic, which had hailed him for ‘competence, aptitude, and integrity in the performance of your duties’. Even after so much had been lost, as war pushed them from house to house, one frontline to the next, he did everything he could to keep all his certificates safe.
Hazrat read the room. His eyes, hooded with age, took in the anxious murmur of his grown children, the giggles of his grandchildren, the clatter of cooking in the kitchen. Four of his sons were around him – the guard, the nurse, the clerk, the highschool student; the other two now working in Germany. His three daughters, including his eldest, Sahida, who lived in Germany but happened to be visiting with her family, were with him too. Her presence warmed his heart. Clever Sahida, his first child to live after three babies born before her had died, one after the other, even before they had reached the age when they could toddle into his arms. His beloved wife, Laila, wasn’t to blame. God tested them. Then, one after another, nine healthy children had blessed their lives.
They took care of him and Laila. They had recently moved out of their rented mud home into this two-storey brick house, another floor still to be built (money permitting) by one of his sons, who sent money home from Germany. Hazrat had always spent whatever he earned on his family, thinking only of today, not saving for tomorrow. And of course there were the months when he had kept working even when the hotel said there wasn’t enough money to pay him.
When he had started at the Inter-Continental the king, Zahir Shah, was trying to take Afghanistan forwards. Today Hazrat struggled to comprehend why his country, his hotel, kept going
The Fines T h o T el in Kabul backwards. In the hotel they were now relying on the ‘Masters’, the young Afghans with university degrees and no experience, no knowledge of hotels. Young Sadeq on the front desk was smart, but he was not as smart as Hazrat.
Last week they had pitched a big tent by the security post at the bottom of the hill. Everyone who had been unceremoniously sacked, from the oldest to the youngest, had joined the protest. Some managers came down to see them, bringing nice words, but nothing more. Even engineer Amanullah – who was now known as Dr Faqiri, a university dean of engineering – who used to keep this hotel going, came by to shake his head with worry and shake their hands. Their bosses didn’t budge. One of their colleagues, who knew all about these legal matters, prepared their documents, their ammunition in this fight. A fight they had won yesterday.
They should have known Hazrat was a fighter. It was true that he no longer had the muscular build he had once honed in the boxing ring. But he knew his own mind, and he spoke it. His children knew that, too. Until the sudden disruption, he had planned to go up the hill today. He resolved that tomorrow he would head straight there. If the old managers were still in charge, he would set them straight about their compensation. If it was the Taliban, he would tell them, too. Agha Sahib was ready to return to work.
Hours earlier he had kept calling his co-workers at the hotel who were still on the job. Sometimes they answered, to reassure him they were still there. But now he couldn’t reach anyone. Phone signals were weak, lines congested. The word from the streets was that they were chock-a-block with beat-up yellow taxis, clapped-out white Corollas, swish SUV s. A wave of panic was crashing over the capital, beeping, shouting, shrieking. The pavements were packed with pedestrians, everyone rushing
somewhere, nowhere. The summer’s sun began to cast long shadows across Hazrat’s floor, the last light of dusk slipping away like the certainties of his old life.
At six o’clock, after the family kneeled in evening prayer, they huddled round the TV set to watch the nightly TOLO news bulletin. It started with its pacy music and cameras sweeping over stunning vistas of Afghanistan. ‘Many parts of the country have fallen into the hands of the Taliban,’ said the newsreader. Everyone knew that already. ‘The Taliban announce they will prevent war in Kabul.’ Some of Hazrat’s children sighed audibly.
Then came comments from the streets. ‘We ordinary people are suffering,’ exclaimed one man. ‘All those who had money fled.’ Poor Kabulis were venting their anger. Hazrat’s heart went out to the man; he felt what they felt.
The newsreader announced ‘a possible meeting between politicians and the Taliban in Doha’, cueing images of Afghan security chiefs in mottled-green camouflage uniforms standing in a straight line, shoulder-to-shoulder. The army chief announced to a nervous nation that they were ‘going to go to Doha tomorrow and will discuss the issue of Afghanistan and reach an agreement’. Hazrat locked onto this thought as he shifted on their communal carpet. So there was still a chance. Then, suddenly, the camera cut back to a wide-angle shot of the bright-blue TV studio.
The news anchor, Waheed Ahmadi, was back in close focus. His face spoke more loudly than his words. He paused, looking down at a piece of paper, furrowing his bushy black eyebrows with even greater intensity. ‘First, pay attention to the news that has just reached us,’ he said.
Hazrat leaned in. They all did.
‘Two sources tell TOLO news that President Ashraf Ghani has fled the country.’