These are pics and stories to Early Days of the Emirate, Chapter 3 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.
Welcome to Tashkent, a quiet ex communist Russian state north of Afghanistan. We had escaped Afghanistan to watching the evacuation from afar. It seemed odd to leave with nothing but my camera gear. I had lucky enough one bank card on me so I could buy some stuff. I bought some adidas track suits to fit in.
Other than that I had a t shirt of the US Embassy of Tashkent given to me by the Embassy. They had negotiated our leave with the Uzbek Embassy and the Taliban. It took the buzz kill of a daring escape out of it but it is what it is.
Hollie was constantly on air talking about the situation, I was looking for ways back or what do next. We had some money for our book we were meant to work on and well I didn't want to go back to lockdown Melbourne. Not the 5km bubble again.
The Australian DFAT did call me and say I could return home. To not worry about the three months declaration of not returning home cause of covid fears. I said, I will work on what I will do next.
I also was on the phone constantly looking for ways to get my friends out of Afghanistan, my students I taught, colleagues and real estate agent's wife. I met the real estate agent briefly back home in Dandenong as he was cold calling to see my sister's place would be interested in selling.
My dad found out he was Afghan and called me to see him. I believe he followed me on instagram and knew I was in Kabul and might have a connection. It was a whole lot of talking every day. To friends, to politicians, to the military. Getting permissions, dealing with Talibs but the airport security was fucking tight. New passwords or codes for access.
I did however managed to get her and her brother on a flight. It ended up going to Ukraine and took some time to get them to Dubai for processing. I yelled at an Australian miltary commander on why they couldn't leave the airport to get Australians out. They seem too afraid or so unfamiliar with Kabul.
I was dead set on returning back there. I managed to get the number of Abdul Qahar Balkhi, the deputy minister of Foreign Affairs after seeing him on tv. He replied that journalist could return.
We were looking for ways back. The gateway seem like it would be closed going through from Uzbekistan. We had possible some military contractors or possibly the CIA meet us trying to work out chartering a flight. But that seem like a dead end too as they were trying to make contacts with Uzbek Government. They didn't want to play ball with Americans.
We decided to leave to Tajikistan but that was a dead end except for a contact at the Afghan embassy. Apparently the government had sent over several million US dollars as 'wages' just before the fall. We tried to cross through the Tajik border but it was closed to foreigners. We needed a letter from Tajik KGB to get across and well that was going to be impossible.
Now the no one wanted to help with the border cross over from Uzbekistan but it didn't mean we couldn't try. And so we crossed back into Uzbekistan, hired a taxi with my bad Farsi skills and made it back to the border town to Afghanistan.
The next day we headed to the border and what felt like ages with the border guards looking at Hollie's Australian passport (she being a dual citizen with the US). They let us through. Fucking excited we ran back to the border.
The Taliban had taken over the border and quickly looked through our passports. Instead of a computer he had an old ledger and wrote our entry by hand. The security scanners was manual but the Talibs just opened the bags and closed them straight up straight away. The process was less than ten minutes and we were out.
We had a friend awaiting on the other side with his brothers who were taxi drivers. We jumped in and did the treacherous long drive to Kabul. The roads of the Salang had thousands of potholes and we could of walked faster. The Salang tunnel was in dilaptated and looked like a death trap.
Passing all the white flags was confronting. It was going to somewhere different. I had been on this road before many times but now it belong to the Taliban. I had no idea how the Taliban would treat us.
The Taliban controlled all the check points but they took one look at us and let us go. In fact seeing a foreign woman would make them wave us through. One guy stopped for a cheeky look. He was the taxi driver's cousin. He had smooth silky hair.
I asked him how he got his hair so silky and shiny.
He responded "Head and Shoulders"
We cracked up laugh and kept on going. Samarghan by far has the best kebabs. I highly recommend stopping at the food stops there.
But we got through it all and we made it back to Kabul. I felt glad to have all my things again. It was like in the computer games where you get captured and you get back all your things back again. It was good to be back home in the guest house but now everything had changed. We no longer had our friends here. Welcome to the new Emirates.