Living in Kabul -- without constant fear

Lael H. Adams, a graduate student at Boston University studying international relations and journalism, is working this summer for the Ministry of Rural Rehabilitation and Development in Kabul.

By Lael H. Adams

KABUL -- I attended a briefing recently to 200 newly-arrived US soldiers at the Afghanistan Counterinsurgency Training Center in the capital. After the presentation, a soldier, realizing I was a foreigner, tapped me on the shoulder.

“Excuse me, ma’am,” he said in a thick Southern accent. “Doesn’t it scare you here?”

This question has been coming at me from friends and family back home, and from strangers, since I came to Afghanistan in May.

While it may be difficult for many Americans to think of Afghanistan as much more than a faraway, giant mess of a war zone, I feel relatively safe in Kabul, contrary to the fear I had conjured up in my mind before I arrived. Though I would not categorize Kabul as a “safe place,’’ for many expatriates working in Kabul offices, living here is less of an exercise in dodging bullets than in dodging annoying security restrictions placed on them by the companies they work for.

The international community does a good job of encouraging fear in people, especially with the upcoming presidential elections tightening the security situation. The result is that some expatriates just work here. It becomes a challenge to block out that fear in order to really live here.

On my way to work each day, I see reminders of the violence this historic city has endured over the many years -- bullet-pocked walls, bombed-out buildings, abandoned bits of Soviet military equipment, mine clearing signs. My driver one day pointed out to me where the British charity worker Gayle Williams was gunned down in broad daylight while walking down the street last October.

Regardless of these daily reminders, I don’t feel the danger. For me, Kabul is a city shrouded in a false sense of security. So I allow myself to do some things I hadn’t imagined I would be able to do, whether taking a picnic trip outside the city, going shopping in the bazaar, walking down the street to the neighborhood restaurant, or hopping in a yellow taxi on the street with some Afghan friends.

But things do happen.

I live in a house in a residential area in the north of the city. Despite many of the secure guesthouses frequented by expatriates, my house has no armed guard and, until recently, no barbed wire. When I first moved in, there were not even locks on the doors. My roommate, another Western woman, had lived in the house for a month and didn’t seem to think it was a problem, so neither did I. Three weeks later, I woke up to find the kitchen door wide open and the rug missing from the floor. The carpet never reappeared, and the next day I had a carpenter install dead bolts on the doors and string barbed wire along the garden wall.

Just as I was starting to shake the fear from this incident, I was sharing a car with a co-worker when she casually asked, “Did you hear about the shooting two streets down from your house last night?” A vehicle belonging to a nongovernmental organization that had been transporting money had been hijacked at gunpoint in the late evening. The driver was shot, though not fatally, and the robbers made off with the car.

However, the most fear I’ve felt thus far has not come from anything native to Kabul, but ironically, from the pervasive foreign military presence here. About three times a week on the hourlong commute to work, troop convoys, usually American or French, come careening up the road, splitting the bumper-to-bumper traffic down the middle. I’ve been told they have a “no-stop’’ policy. A soldier hangs out of the hatch frantically waving for people to clear the way, looking as though he’s doing the breaststroke through the air.

On a recent trip to the Salang Pass two hours north of Kabul, going for a leisurely picnic with an Afghan friend and her family turned into a scare. My friend’s brother was driving when we became lost in the winding mountain roads. We drove slowly around a blind turn bearing slightly into the left side of the road. Suddenly facing us was a US armored vehicle. A soldier popped out of the hatch clutching a gun. He immediately took aim at our car, but we swerved sharply to the right out of the convoy’s path. Later, while we were eating by the river, the convoy came back through, bringing with them a burst of gunfire. I don’t know what they were shooting at. I just remember the fear I felt.

In retrospect, many of these experiences aren’t unique to Kabul, but are just as likely to happen in New York City or Miami or even Boston. It is pointless to live here, or anywhere, in constant fear, despite what you may be advised of. I have come to realize that the poor security situation is not the biggest obstacle to living a close-to-normal life in Kabul -- that obstacle is fear.

To learn how you can blog for Passport, contact Lydia Rebac at lrebac@globe.com