Kabul through her eyes

Tribune News Service

Amritsar, June 12

A visit to Kabul, a city that is haunted by its troubled history with Taliban and is often picturised through war-torn, militarised narrative, can surprise anybody with its love for Bollywood! In her book — Shadow City: A Woman Walks Kabul — Taran Khan, a journalist from India, presents an interesting and counter-narrative of Kabul, capturing the city’s eccentricities as well as its unrelenting pursuit to function as any other city in the world.

“Kabul is like any other city in the world, despite being war-torn. It might surprise many but there are swanky eating joints where you can blow up hundreds of dollars on food, and then of course there are residential as well as poor areas also. The people are very hospitable. As far as women are concerned, they enjoy fashion. They are chic and elegant and beautiful. People, like in India, turn to Bollywood for entertainment. Even at their weddings, Bollywood songs are played,” shared Taran Khan, who was hosted by Majha House to talk about her book. Winner of Tata Literature Live! First Book Award and also the Stanford Dolman Travel Book of the Year award, Khan’s book is a memoir documenting her multiple visits to Kabul. Writer Padmini Mongia, who was in conversation with Khan, asked her about her experience of covering Kabul on foot.

Drawing parallels between two cities — Kabul and Aligarh — she says, “Walking in a city like Kabul can be seen as an assertive stance where you are claiming your space. But what is important to me is that you put yourself out, your body, out on the streets and you become one with the streets and the place.” She said one is not really expected to just loiter in the bazaars or the streets. Similiarly, having grown up in Aligarh, when you walk the streets of Aligarh, you kind of expect people to stare at you for it is not expected out of women.”

Another parallel she drew between the two cities was that one is always under scrutiny in Aligarh as if someone is watching over you all the time.

Sharing a similar anecdote of Kabul, Taran says, “I remember once I was with a group of friends and one of them lit a cigarette in a public area. He immediately got a call from his father in Europe asking him if he was smoking. So, you can imagine how many eyes are on you all the time! It is quite an unnerving thing.”

Her book examines the city’s white and dark corners through stories that she collected. “While Kabul is seen as always battling with bullets and missiles because of the never-ending war, there is another war going on within the city and that is the battle with drugs. So many people, are addicted to opium which grows in abundance in Afghanistan that it is quite shocking.”

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