These are pics and stories to Before the Fall, Chapter 2 of Hollie McKay's and my photobook on Afghanistan. Hollie's writing is in the book and this substack is my account and story behind the images.
The days were hot and frustrating. On the news we could hear Taliban making gains. It was hard to get onto the spokesman for Dostum. They were clearly ignoring us. We needed to make stories so we hit the street doing vox pops.
Most people were afraid of the Taliban coming. It would be the end of music, smoking and many things we take for granted that were western. It went around the shrine and gained a young Afghan man who could speak a little English to be a translator.
We wandered the shrine and actually got Hollie inside. It usually restricted to non muslims to enter. People often bring the sick to pray and hope that the shrine heals them. It is a large place of pilgrimage to Shia religion.
I saw a young girl by the fence enjoying watching the pigeons. She laughed and waved at us, the foreigners. Western always seem to bring a crowd and usually leave after enough personal space is invaded. I usually move to not get pick pocketed or draw potential kidnappers attentions.
I got onto my skateboard student now a young fine adult Noorzai who came and picked us up in a car. He was worried. Though his worries vanished to see me and we laughed and joked about life. He was engaged to a girl that was not his cousin or arranged and that was to be celebrated.
We went to a western style cafe but in the end we went back to the shisha den for more shisha. He did laugh at the word sheesh sheesh and corrected us.
It was good to see the young man. He had continued working at Skateistan and had competed a few places abroad. Afghanistan though missed its chance to try to qualify in skateboarding in Tokyo.
Noorzai was planning to go to Kabul though later in the afternoon to arrange all the plans for the engagement. He gave me some numbers of possible students who could translate for us. We were on the back burner to Heavy D (Dostum).
Finally we got onto the Afghan Special Forces and they picked us up in the middle of the night. We met up with their young commander who was tired as fuck. You could see the boys did long days and had a sense they had been on tactical retreats. Lack of assistance from the regular Afghan National Army or even the police.
These boys had the cream of the cream of American firepower when it came to rifles. They had American lingo down pat hanging out with American soldiers and they loved a good red bull and chocolate bar. They promised to take us out to the front in the morning.
That was better than waiting on Dostum for sure.