# Posted 4:46 AM by Patrick Belton  

LETTER FROM AFGHANISTAN: OxBlog's intrepid new Kabul correspondent has hit the ground running and writes in with his impressions:

So you all know: I got to Kabul safely, and have been here for a day and a half now. In some ways it feels very familiar (echoes of India and Nepal), in others very new and alien. The airport runway is lined with the rusted wrecks of other planes cannibalized for parts. A scattering of poppies have sprung up next to the tarmac. I waited for a couple hours at the baggage claim to find that one of my checked bags was still in Dubai. When I got out to the parking lot, the guy sent to pick me up was not the least put out by my lateness -- still very friendly, very cheerful.

Kabul has sort of an old west feel to it -- a boomtown, and a city of dust. Every surface is covered in the stuff. Dusty wooden scaffolding is hung with dusty posters of the Tajik-Afghan hero and martyr Ahmed Shah Massoud. The trees are all muted shades of green, and in the mornings, the whole sky is a grey-brown haze. Dust-colored mountains shoot up on every side -- some barren, others with an astonishing clutter of mud-brick houses clinging to their steep, craggy slopes. The roads are clogged with yellow taxis and dirty buses, and trucks painted so gaudily that even the dust can't mute them. Some of the trucks were loaded so high with bundles and boxes I can't believe they stayed upright. One pick-up had a camel hog-tied and tossed in the back, its head and neck lolling ridiculously over the side.

Most of the houses are either half-built or half-destroyed; the city is equal parts construction site and war ruin. I drove around with a couple Afghan guys today in search of road construction equipment -- a long, hot, exhausting day, but fascinating. Construction is clearly a booming business, and the restoration of ties to the outside world means we were picking up equipment that hailed from Japan to Belarus (punctiliously skipping all the cheap, high-quality Iranian products, of course). We took a break to eat fatty kebab off a three-foot iron skewer. Then we hiked into the middle of Kabul's main market, a dense tangle of alleys and courtyards with a splendor of goods spilling out into the dim, narrow streets: carpets, silks, a mountain of pumpkins, spices, nuts, tin trunks, chickens. We wove through the crowds, dodging motorbikes and hand-drawn carts and the three-foot deep sewer ditch in the middle of the road. Nearly all the women we passed in the crowded market were wearing sky-blue burqas -- overall, I think around half the women I've seen on the street have been fully veiled, and the other half have merely had a shawl or scarf over their heads. There are far, far fewer women and children out in public here than in any other South Asian country I've ever visited.

I haven't felt hostility from anyone on the street so far; most people are reserved, many are friendly. Still, we live with some tensions. We work inside a walled compound, like most of the foreigners here. Our guesthouse has three (unarmed) guards at the door. We don't walk out alone.

The guesthouse I'm staying at is nice enough -- got a good cook, and a TV with DVD player. I fell asleep last night watching a Korean soap opera which my co-workers (neither of them Korean) have become addicted to.

That's all that comes to mind so far. More updates as events warrant...

Cheers,
Joel

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