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In a tourist hotel, on the Afghani-Pakistani border, twelve months previous, a Japanese man walks into a room. A Singaporean woman tells me that they both have just arrived back from Kabul in Afghanistan. They spent 18 days in the country, visiting the capital, followed by Mazar-i-Sharif in the north, Bamiyan where the Taliban destroyed the giant Buddha statues and finally, the crystal blue waters of the lake at Band-i-Amir. She tells me about the picnic they had in front of the lake, the journey times there, the price of hotels in Kabul, the driver for $40 a day. The Japanese man comes out of a room and places in my hand something thumb-length wrapped in a white paper tissue. I unwrap the contents of the tissue and what lies inside looks like a piece of shit, about 3 inches long, solid with fibrous white hairs draping the form twisted at one end. But it only looks like shit and I’m not certain this is, in actuality, shit. So I have to ask, ‘What is this thing?’ ‘It’s wolf shit,’ the man from Japan replies. |
'I am half-lost, for words. ‘How do you know it’s wolf shit,’ I say, ‘ it could be dog-shit, cow-shit. O my God! It could even be yeti-shit!’ He laughs. |
SW, London 2006 |