Downtown, Kabul, September 5th 2003. Hiroshi-san and Tomo-san crossed the border from Pakistan, five days before. They’re on holidays. They’ve visited Kabul Zoo, the park, ‘Chicken’ Street (an old hippy hang-out), the castle, the football stadium, the museum, blown-up statues in Bamiyan and the park – again. They got passport photos taken on the street, dressed in shalwar qamiz and turbans (hanging long at the back, Taliban style) and they heeded a warning not to visit some archaeological ruins outside of Kandahar lest they wanted to end in ruins themselves. Now they wait in a crummy hotel room. Two violent explosions on the street have violently rocked the building, and them. They hope these explosions are car bombs, not rockets from the surrounding hills, for the hotel has no basement to seek refuge. Hiroshi-san looks nervous. Tomo-san says that nothing is worse than an earthquake. Then he tells a story of being caught up in an earthquake. Running out of cigarettes, he gets up to leave. The door flies open. The manager, Mohammed – if a Chinese man gave him an Indian name, it would be ‘Bear’- stands in the door-frame and lets out a voracious laugh, ‘Ho, ho, ho.!!! Come on down!! All the tourists are there, and the television people, and the army. It’s OK, come on, have a look. Take your cameras!’ Hiroshi-san, camera in hand, heads to the roof. He seeks an ariel perspective. Tomo-san walks downstairs and onto the street, which is unrecognisable, strewn with blood and debris, though the thirty corpses have already been cleared away. TV crews have also done most of their work as five Spanish soldiers – only one of them female – stand on the perimeter of the fresh carnage-space to pose smiling for a photo. The next day Hiroshi-san and Tomo-san travel back to Pakistan, over the famous Kybher Pass, which Alexander the Great, himself, is reputed to have traversed on the back of an elephant, and where, so to speak, he left some calves behind.

-KW, Kabul, September 2003