Kabul's Very Historic Garden Of Fidelity

2 paintings of Babur laying out the gardens

I was lucky I got to travel through Afghanistan when I did, in 1969 and again 1971. After that the whole thing blew up and today when Westerners think of Afghanistan, they think of off an ugly, dusty, crumbling, violent landscape. When I think of the "best" countries I ever visited, Afghanistan is always high on the list. And countries get on that list because of the people more than anything else. The Afs were always incredibly friendly and hospitable, even when I got thrown into jail for trying to smuggle 50 kilos of hash out of the country in my van.

Unfortunately, in the last decades Afghanistan hasn't been a place for foreign visitors. A Taliban spokesman a few months ago: “It is part of our war strategy to target any foreign citizen whose country has a military presence in Afghanistan and enters our country without permission from the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan." A few tourists go anyway, maybe 100 a year, fewer than when I was first there in 1969. A Canadian couple disappeared and haven't been heard of since. Another two were a wealthy Russian couple, who hired an armored car and bodyguards at $1,500 a day, stayed in the $356-a-night Kabul Serena Hotel, toured the Panjshir Valley, and went home on schedule.

Like tourism industries anywhere, Afghan tourism does have its boosters. “The security situation is fairly stable, and tourists who visit are fairly comfortable and they are pleased when they see a hotel of this standard,” said Shahryar T. Khan, the general manager of the Kabul Serena Hotel, which has five stars and “world-class security measures.”

The 177-room hotel runs at 64 percent occupancy, Mr. Khan said, and tourists make up an increasing share of the guests. “Of course, from zero it’s gone up to 1 percent.” The Serena has twice been attacked by terrorists, and in 2008 Taliban insurgents killed six guests in an attack aimed at the hotel’s health spa.

Ghulam Nabi Farahi, the deputy minister of tourism says “Afghanistan is a country very suitable for attracting tourists. It’s a place where tourists can have all their wishes come true.” And he insists that there have been no recent cases of tourists attacked or kidnapped. The WikiTravel site for Afghanistan has a bold warning on top telling would be visitors that travel there "is extremely dangerous, and independent travel/sightseeing is emphatically discouraged."

But this week, a friend turned me on to a blog by Barbara Wells Sarudy who expresses a beautiful historical appreciation for Afghanistan-- or at least for the Afghanistan of the 1500s-- and from a unique perspective.

The Bagh-e Vafa (Garden of Fidelity) was Babur's first garden in what is now Afghanistan. He wrote in his memoirs, "In 1508-09, I had constructed a charbagh garden called Bagh-i-Wafa on a rise to the south of the Adianapur fortress. It overlooks the river, which flows between the fortress and the garden. It yields many oranges, citroens and pomegranates."

What is known about its design also comes from Babur's memoirs, "There oranges, citrons and pomegranates grow in abundance...I had plantains brought and planted there; they did vedry well. The year before I had had sugar cane planted there; it also did well...The garden lies high, has running water close at hand, and a mild winter climate. In the middle of it, a one-mill stream flows constantly past the little hill on which are the four garden plots. In the southwest part of it there is a reservoir ten by ten, round which are orange-trees and a few pomegranates, the whole encircled by a trefoil meadow. This is the best part of the garden, a most beautiful sight when the oranges take color."

This type of garden, called a charbagh, was described earlier in an account from Sir John Mandeville’s travels into the East, c. 1370, “And this Paradise is enclosed all about with a wall…and in the most high place of Paradise, even in the middle place, is a well that casteth out the four floods that run by divers lands. Of the which, the first is clept Pison, or Ganges, that is all one; and it runneth throughout Ind or Emlak, in the which river be many precious stones, and much of lignum aloes and much gravel of gold. And that other river is clept Nilus or Gison, that goeth by Ethiopia and after by Egypt. And that other is clept Tigris, that runneth by Assyria and by Armenia the great. And that other is clept Euphrates, that runneth also by Media and Armenia and by Persia. And men there beyond say, that all the sweet waters of the world, above and beneath, take their beginning of the well of Paradise, and out of that well all waters come and go.”

Charbagh is a Persian-style garden layout. The quadrilateral garden is divided by walkways or flowing water into four smaller parts. In Persian, "Char" means "four" and "bagh" means "garden." Chahrbagh originated from the time of Achaemenid Persia. Greek historians, such as Herodotus and Xenophon, give extensive accounts of Cyrus the Great's palatial city of Pasargadae and his four-gardens.

The Gardens of Babur, also called Bagh-e Babur, is today a historic park in Kabul, Afghanistan, and also the last resting-place of the first Mughal emperor Babur. The gardens are thought to have been developed in the early 1500s, when Babur gave orders for the construction of an "avenue garden" in Kabul, described in some detail in his memoirs, the Baburnama.  Today, many species chosen for replanting are specifically mentioned in the Baburnama, including walnut, cherry, quince, mulberry and apricot trees.

The Baburnama was the first autobiography in the Muslim world. It is the memoir of Zahir ud-Din Muhammad Babur (1483-1530), founder of the Mughal Empire & a great-great-great-grandson of Timur. It is an autobiographical work, originally written in the Chagatai language, known to Babur as "Turki" (Turkic), the spoken language of the Andijan-Timurids. Because of Babur's cultural origin, his prose is highly Persianized & contains many phrases & smaller poems in Persian. By 1590, the autobiography was completely translated to Persian by a Mughal courtier, Abdul Rahim, in AH (Hijri) 998 (1589-90). Babur & his successors introduced a level of Persian sophistication into Northern India, founding the last dynasty of India, the Mughal Dynasty.

Babur begins his story at age 12. His father had died, & he had inherited & lost a kingdom in the lush Ferghana Valley north of Afghanistan. As a teenager, Babur captured Samarkand, only to lose it. In his early 20s, Babur seemed to strategize more. He took to the forests, where he lived for 3 years, slowly building & training an army. He had an Empire to establish.

When he was ready, he crossed the Hindu Kush mountain range, & captured Kabul, a city he grew to love. In his autobiography, he described Kabul, “It is a pretty little province, completely surrounded by mountains. This province is a mercantile center. From India, caravans of 10, 15, 20 thousand pack animals brings slaves, textiles, sugar, & spices. Many Kabul merchants would not be satisfied with 300 or 400% profit! Goods from Iraq, Antonia, China, [& beyond] can be found in Kabul.”

While in Kabul, he designed a garden. Gardens were part of his homeland, which he missed. There, they tended to be walled enclosures with water channels which ran at regular intervals, cross-sections. And that’s what he recreated, a garden with terraces & running water. The water adds background noise & the fragrance from blossoms, as it cools. When he brought water to the dry, dusty landscape, it became fertile. Water transforms the land into an image of paradise. The Garden of Eden, the Promised Land.

Despite his adoration of Kabul & his garden, Babur was not ready to retire. He conquered Kandahar, another wealthy city along prosperous trade routes. He crossed the Oxus River & conquered his ancestral lands of the Ferghana Valley. He then set his sights on India. He used the newest technologies; & his battalion of 12,000 was able to defeat an army of 100,000. He sacked what is today Northern India. He & his descendants ruled the subcontinent for 3 centuries, instilling a legacy of Persian culture & Islamic faith.

"If there is a paradise on earth, it is this, it is this, it is this!" reads the inscription on Babur’s tomb in his Kabul Garden. Babur died in Northern India, but was later brought back to Kabul & was laid to rest in his beloved garden.

I don't recall ever seeing it. Now I want to go back to check it out!

JESUS! PEOPLE ARE GOING TO KABUL AGAIN!

Sunday's New York Times did a story on "the next great adventure-travel destination": Kabul. "Even though much of Afghanistan remains dangerous, tourists are beginning to trickle back in, some lured by the thrill of the unknown, others by the pleasures offered by such new tourist spots as the Kabul Serena, an elegant $36.5-million hotel that claims a 'five-star ambiance' in the heart of the city. As many as 5,000 Western tourists visited Kabul last year, Jonathan Bean told me, most of them affluent Europeans and Americans who have traveled to '30 or 40' countries, including developing ones. 'Most our clients are experienced travelers,' Jonathan said. 'They’ve trekked in Nepal, gone on safari in East Africa. Some have returned after coming here in the 1960s and 1970s. They see Afghanistan as the next great adventure-travel destination.'"

I'd love to go back to Afghanistan some time. I'm sure I won't; too dangerous. I first went close to 40 years ago, right out of college. It was a major way station on the "hippie trail" from Istanbul to New Delhi. I was driving a 1969 red VW camper I had bought in Weisbaden and Afghanistan was far more than just a way station to me. Driving across Asia, by the time you get to Afghanistan you know for sure you're not in Kansas anymore, nor in Europe. It was the most foreign place I had ever been. So different from anything I had ever experienced. It felt as much as like traveling in time (backwards) as traveling in space.


There never were any railroads to Afghanistan so the only way to get there before the late 50s was as part of an army. Then the U.S. and the Soviet Union built a road around the country. The U.S. built one from Herat on the Iranian border south and east to Khandahar and up to Kabul and the Soviets built one from Kabul up to Mazar-i-Sharif and then on to Herat. Basically it was the only paved road in the country and now, from what I understand, it is mostly unpaved... destroyed by decades of war and civil neglect.

I drove my van from Meshed in Iran to Herat. It was love at first sight-- mostly with the cheap, powerful hash and the Afghan people who were all stoned all the time. It always boggles my mind now how the mainstream media reports on the wars in Afghanistan but never mentions that every Afghan is stoned-- really stoned-- all the time. It probably has a significant effect on their way of fighting. Herat was like this magical medieval city, completely outside my realm of experience. And the next stop, Khandahar was even more bizarre, most strange, more mysterious and foreign. I felt like I was in Biblical times. Before going up to Kabul I visited some college friends who were in the Peace Corps, stationed in Ghazni. So primitive! But wonderful, warm, friendly generous people. They shared whatever they had.

I spent a lot of time in Kabul. Two Canadians who I had driven across Asia settled in to the one western hotel in the city, the brand new Intercontinental. It was a luxury high-rise in the middle of a basically mud city that looked like it would take a week of strong rain to just wash away. I'll never forget the Kabul River, more like a series of trickles and puddles in the middle of town. I recall standing near the royal palace, one of the few substantial buildings in the city, and looking down at the river. Men were on the bank brushing their teeth, washing their clothes, bathing, going to the bathroom, washing a donkey...


The other new thing in this ancient city that year was the Kabul Zoo. It was a wonder for the Afs... a little rinky-dink for the foreigners. But everyone was stoned and everyone was enjoying everything. Except the Kabul Runs. No one enjoys that-- much worse than Montezuma's Revenge. Up and down Chicken Street there were European and Australian hippies staying in cheap flop houses and sick with the Kabul Runs. The music was great and the hash was the best and the food was fine and everything was so cheap. And you'd sit around and talk with people who had come back from Bamyan and the Hindu Kush and Mazar and the Khyber Pass and figure out where you wanted to go next. The king was still in charge and the Russians hadn't invaded yet. I remember seeing some mullahs, straight from the countryside, outraged that 2 young women got out of a car unaccompanied-- albeit covered head to toe (with just a little grill for the eyes) in a chadris (what they call a burqa everywhere else). They spat all over them. The scene has stuck with me for all these decades.


UPDATE: NOT SO FAST

I slept in my van the whole time I was in Kabul in 1969 and in 1972. But friends of mine stayed at the Intercontinental, the only western style hotel in the city country. Various rebel groups over the past 30 years have used it for target practice and blown it up pretty badly. Now foreigners stay at the Serena-- or at least they did 'til today. The NY Times just reported that some Taliban insurgents blew that up too. Yeah, probably a little early (or late) for Afghan tourism just now.

A thunderous explosion struck a 2-year-old Kabul luxury hotel frequented by foreigners on Monday, and the Taliban took responsibility, calling it a coordinated assault by four men armed with guns and suicide belts.

The Interior Ministry said at least six people were killed and at least six were wounded in the explosion at the Serena Hotel, including two foreign officials it did not identify... The Associated Press quoted an American who was exercising in the hotel gym as saying that she heard gunfire after the explosion, and saw a body and pools of blood in the lobby area and bullet marks in the gym area. She asked not to be identified for her safety. Ambulances and American troops in Humvees rushed to the hotel after attack, the A.P. reported.

Things are obviously deteriorating? You think so?

One Year On And Nothing's Any Better

This is a post from a western woman, a filmmaker, working in Kabul. It very much captures the Kabul I recall, only it's much worse. Is it a place you'd be interested in visiting? I recommend reading the whole thing at the link. Here are some excerpts:

Going out to dinner is always an interesting experience. Fully covered from head to toe and always paranoid about forgetting a headscarf (or having it slip off your head in the car) generally make the experience more worrisome than enjoyable. Add checkpoints and Afghan police to the mix, along with bone-shaking car rides (no paved roads) and you get the picture.

In New York and New Delhi, I savored going out; dressing up, wearing new jewelry, getting to try new restaurants before meeting friends at a local bar for a drink. I don’t miss these things in Afghanistan – I came here knowing full well that my social life would change drastically (after all, I could’ve just stayed in NYC or Delhi if that’s all I wanted). But what I didn’t expect to change was the very vocabulary of my behavior.

In other cities, I have never thought twice about the fact that I couldn’t enter places without ensuring that I wouldn’t mistakenly brush past a man, that I had to give all men the right of way, and that I wasn’t allowed to speak to strangers or look at other men in the face. In Kabul, I do.

My first weeks here were the most painful-- having to unlearn everything I had picked up in rambunctious, loud Delhi. In Kabul, I felt like as if I was a captive-- wrapped around the head with a scarf that acted as a leash that instructed me to behave in a certain way. My first week was a string of commands from my male, Afghan co-workers and crew, who for my sake taught me how to behave on the streets – “don’t laugh too loud,” “keep your hands hidden,” “don’t say things too loud,” “try and keep your chin down,” “stop walking like you own the street!” And the ever familiar, “wear your headscarf tighter, Anita-jaan, it is falling off!”

...Like all local women in the neighborhood, I can’t leave the house alone. People outside of Afghanistan are shocked to hear this – “but the Taliban have left, no?” Yes indeed, but the Taliban did not make these rules. Many of these rules were actually enforced and created during the time before the Taliban by warlords who, bloated with arms and cash from Pakistan and the US (in order to defeat the Russians), fractured the country.

After the Taliban were defeated, those same warlords were brought back into power by the US. The Karzai government resumes must read like a list charges at an international tribunal. The human rights’ violations are endless. And it is thanks to them (and not the Taliban) that I have to live in a capital city shuttered by extreme conservatism.

A male partner must accompany me at all times outside the house. This ranges from the chowkidor to my husband to friends. Sometimes my husband’s translator comes along, humming as he walks ahead expecting me to follow blindly. When I want to stop, I ask the shopkeeper a question-- usually the price of something – making sure I’m extra loud to ensure he has heard me, and will stop humming and hurry over to where I am.

He carries everything after I’m done shopping. Per his instructions, I shouldn’t carry anything since I’m a woman. By month three, I have learned to walk behind him, lift nothing and simply head home as quickly as I can. He is a Pashtun from the south and older than I am.

The same translator is puzzled when my husband asks me what I want for dinner or lunch. He looks at our exchanges quizzically. We look Indian to him, and yet behave so differently from the Indians he sees in the soap operas he and his family watch at home. In that world men and women are often just as conservative as the Afghans, with each gender culturally filling very different roles. The women are meant to be docile, devoted wives, while the female evildoers are the ones who break the mould and wreak havoc among the orderly. My husband and I don’t seem to even understand that we’re different genders. We speak as equals. This is clearly confusing.

In the end, we finish dinner and make our way home through the dark and quiet streets. We paid the bill in dollars. Price-wise it would amount to the same if I had dined out in New York City. “Restaurants for expats charge expat prices,” explained a friend when I first arrived, “make sure you always have enough cash.” On the way home, my housemate reminds me that we are paying for more than just plates of pasta – we pay for the experience of normalcy. Or the closest thing to normal at least. We both agree it wasn’t for the food at any rate. It wouldn’t survive a New Yorker or New Delhi-ite’s expectations of a good meal (for the price we paid). But tastes change once you’re living in Kabul.

The only meals I have coveted here have been home-cooked Afghan vegetarian dishes prepared by a friend’s mother. Seated on their living room floor, with huge slabs of naan to catch the oil and juices dripping from our fingers, I have devoured bowls of red kidney beans steamed with onions and tomatoes and spices with plates of eggplant slices sautéed with tomatoes and topped with a tangy yoghurt sauce.