SWG Tales

If any of you were in SWG Beta or spent any significant amount of time as a contributor on the Sony SWG Smuggler Forums from Launch 2003 to April 2004, then you probably know this guy.

Electricnomad, playing under Zucco on Starsider, was one of the "Four Horsemen of the Smuggler Apocalypse". Funny, but so named because of his and a few others' candid and insightful observations of the Smuggler profession, the game's progress or lack thereof. A quick search of his posts reveals the guy's brilliance and attention to detail.

Enomad is in southern Asia now, Afghanistan and Pakistan, and he sent me a journal of his latest encounters as a government contractor. From what he's written so far, I can see that every bit of wit and tenacity he displayed on the Forums is being put to the test out there in a true outer rim territory. Let me share this with you all.

Electricnomad writes:

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

We were two hours outside of Kabul when things started to fall apart.

After taking a constant beating on the muddy, boulder-strewn path between the Khyber Pass and Kabul, our little Toyota Corolla slammed into one rocky pool too many, and on a soggy cliff next to the raging Kabul River, simply stopped working. We were in the middle of nowhere on the Jalalabad Road, one of the most notoriously bandit-infested stretches of highway in Afghanistan - a road that, last time I asked, was off-limits to foreigners due to safety restrictions. Deep in the long gorge between Kabul and Jalalabad - and in a country where cell phone barely work inside city limits - none of our phones worked. Stuck in a place where most Afghans refuse to travel after dark, we were already running out of daylight, and we were far from home.

And our problems were only beginning.

It had been an easy journey until then. I had caught a rickshaw to the Lahore bus station after midnight and finally left the old Mughal capital at 2:00am, catching a bus filled with sleeping people and loud Hindi pop music. (Luckily, I brought some earplugs to Pakistan.) The trip from Lahore, which took me from one side of Pakistan to the other, lasted the entire night, and I emerged into smoky, manic Peshawar at about 8:00.

I knew that in Peshawar, I was supposed to register with the Frontier Authority and get an armed guard to escort me through the Pashtun tribal lands. But I also knew that the guard who brought me down from the Khyber Pass ten days before hadn't done much of anything except ask for a tip. And more importantly, I knew that the Frontier Authority office was closed until at least 9:00, and that was an hour away.

So after getting off the bus in Peshawar, I immediately went looking for a minibus to the border. In about 20 minutes, I had thrown my bag into a minibus, noticed that the seats in the back were full, jumped in next to the driver, and was off to the Khyber Pass.

It was my second time in the area. I had been there about ten days earlier, but was descending into Pakistan that time rather than leaving it. Ten days before, there was a traffic jam the previous time - the government had closed the road to all transportation because local tribesmen had killed two guys in Karachi. Undeterred, the bus driver pulled off the road, zooming down dusty backalleys before plunging us into a dry riverbed full of playing children and old men carrying Kalishnakovs. We followed that rocky trail until we emerged on the other side of the blocked traffic.

Ten days later, I was ascending the road, and this trip was potentially more complicated due to the fact that I didn't have a permit to be there. For camouflage, I tightened my Afghan scarf, and every time we'd slow down or approach a police checkpoint, I would squint to try to hide the giveaway blue eyes. We weren't stopped a single time.

The little bus climbed up into the jagged black mountains of the Khyber Pass through winding turns half-blocked by dozens of splintered boulders and past the long-abandoned Khyber Railway (the tracks of which are often covered by rock or are washed-out under their foundations). By 9:00 we had reached the soggy brown town of Torkham, straddling the porous border with Afghanistan.

As it was during the first time at the border to enter Pakistan, I had to ask both Pakistani and Afghan officials to stamp my passport - 99% of the people passing through either have no documents or don't bother to get them stamped, and nobody asks any questions. That's not very reassuring from a security standpoint, but it's not as if officials from either side can stop people from just walking a mile away and crossing from there.

Having not registered at the Frontier Authority, I expected trouble at the Pakistani passport office, and from one official, I got it. Luckily, there were two officials there, and the second one wanted nothing to do with making a visitor feel unwelcome (and probably also the extra paperwork that would have come from sorting this out). After the second border official took care of everything, I was soon on my way back to Afghanistan, crossing the crowded middle zone between a throng of bored cops from each side of the border.

After a walk of about 300 feet of no-man's land with a constant stream of people carrying their things from one side to another, I noticed a dramatic increase in the number of burkas, ducked in to get my passport stamped, and set out to find a ride to Kabul.

It didn't take long. After a short walk, I entered the yard where I'd been dropped off ten days earlier, a lot full of beat-up white Toyota Corollas. All I had to say was thrust my chin out towards the cars and say "Kabul." Immediately, eight guys were crowded around chirping out prices in Dari, Pashto, English, and sign language. I picked the guy who looked the least excited, told him the price I'd paid to get to the border from Kabul, and he nodded. I threw my bag into the trunk and stood around waiting for other passengers to show up to round out the four people we'd need to get the car on the road.

That didn't take long, either. An Afghan guy named Fraidoon asked if I was going to Kabul, I said yes, asked where the driver was, I pointed, and in no time we had all gotten in the car, driven past the auto shops clogging the border town to pick up Fraidoon's friend, and were off to Jalalabad to pick up Fraidoon's cousin before we set out for Kabul.

Once we abandoned the mudball of Torkham, the flat, winding road was relatively smooth. We continued past the black mountains around us, and could see the snow-capped peaks of higher places in the Hindu Kush far off in the distance on both sides. I was in the front passenger seat of the car, which was made for Pakistan (as are about half of all cars used in Afghanistan). The fact that the car was made for Pakistan meant that the driver sat on the right side of the car, not the left. Unfortunately for us, Afghanistan drivers use the right side of the road, so this fact also meant that I would have to be the designated spotter for overtaking other cars. And if there is one thing that all Afghan drivers like to do, it is overtake as many cars as possible.

The driver and I quickly got the drill down - I'd hold up a flat palm if he needed to hold on or stop overtaking, and I'd point my finger and flick my wrist a few times if he had room to pass the car in front of us. We used this system for the rest of the day, at least when the car was actually making progress.

As we got closer to Jalalabad, about 60 kilometers from the border, we passed several groups of Chinese workers constructing the road. Of course, when we found them, it also meant that there was no road, and we were diverted off to a muddy path next to the construction zone. Roughly a third of the road actually existed, so there was a lot of off-road action for the poor Corolla. Additionally, in some hillier areas, the road forked off in two or three directions, and usually only one would lead to the right place, though it was never clear which was which. Having a driver who knew the area came in handy, though even he made a few mistakes and had to swerve at the last second or double back a few times.

Traffic appeared as we neared Jalalabad, and the giveaway that we were finally in city limits were the swarms of brightly-painted motorized rickshaws buzzing around the roads. We wended through crowded streets and into mud-caked alleys to find the jewelry store where Fraidoon's cousin was waiting for us. Not coincidentally, that jewelry store was run by Fraidoon's family.

Like many people in Afghanistan, Fraidoon doesn't know exactly how old he is, but he estimates that he's 27. He comes from a family of smiths, gold and silver in particular, and he himself is an expert silversmith, with particular expertise in creating pieces whose style and age are indistinguishable from the original pieces. Could that expertise be misused? You bet.

But this story is about the trip back from Pakistan, and we had only made it as far as Jalalabad.

What did we do after we left Jalalabad?
What else went wrong out in the middle of nowhere?
Did we ever make it to Kabul?
And what happened when the Taliban arrived?

These questions and more will be answered when I have more time and energy (and when you ask nicely).

Hanging out in ???,
ElectricNomad

Grimy and gritty. I'm waiting on his next message, and will post as soon as I get it.

{Bumped soley to add on Part Two of ENomad's journal, which I dug up recently}



One of the mysteries of Afghanistan is the pervasiveness of its dirt. You notice this phenomenon after you take a hot shower for 20 minutes, lathering up and scrubbing yourself clean, washing your hair, and otherwise boiling off all the dust and pollution that settles on you in a normal Afghan day.



It might seem like you're clean, and you may very well have completely washed off all trace of dirt. But within minutes, you don't even have to touch anything - a faint black dirt begins to build up, and in no time, you'll notice that it has once again taken over the lines on the back of your hand, the grooves on your fingertips, and the innermost nooks and crannies of your fingernails.



Antarctica has permafrost.



Afghanistan has permadirt.



I remember having clean hands as I got my passport stamped at the Afghanistan/Pakistan border, and I hadn't really touched anything other than my own belongings. But as we arrived in Jalalabad, roughly an hour-and-a-half from the border, I noticed a black film under my fingernails, and I had to just shake my head and remember:



I really *was* back in Afghanistan.



After our stop at the jewelry store, there were five of us now - Fraidoon, his cousin, his friend, the driver, and myself. We rolled out of the narrow muddy streets of Jalalabad and into the wider muddy highway to Kabul. We passed several large beehive-shaped hearths for making bricks, and passed through a short tunnel, emerging on a strip of shops nestled between a cliff and a lake created from a dam at the other side of the tunnel.



Fraidoon the silversmith and counterfeiter of fine antiquities had told me on the drive through Jalalabad about a great place to get fish, and that place was in the strip of shops past the tunnel. We parked the car next to the cliff and shambled down a stairway carved out of the dirt and leading to the lake. Two bags full of carp were dangling in the water next to a blood-stained pavement where a team of silent Pashtuns worked. We picked a few kilos of live carp, watched a chef up at street level fry them in what looked to be prehistoric grease, ate lunch in a chilly carpeted room right next to the lake, and bagged the rest of the twelve-kilo catch to take back with us for dinner, which we expected to have in Kabul.



On our way back to the car after lunch, I realized that across the street, there were two drink and snack stands, both of them with ceiling-tall stacks of Heineken and Foster's. Last I had heard, it was illegal for Afghans to buy alcohol - but hey, this was the highway that drivers used to transport things between Pakistan and Kabul, so maybe the owners of those two shacks make their cash off passing Pakistani drivers. That wasn't an encouraging thought, but it could explain the driving standards on the Jalalabad Road and much of what was to come.



We hopped over pools of runny mud and piled into the car, with me back in the passenger seat to serve as the signal caller for passing other cars and everyone else in the back to crack each other up in Pashto and Dari. The driver focused on picking out path through the rubble that served as a road and standing firmly on the gas as we sped along out of the Jalalabad suburbs and along the river towards Kabul.



We made good progress, darting past small villages and loitering elders on our way out of the flatland and into the rapidly growing cliffs on both sides. It was just before 3:00 in the afternoon when I asked Fraidoon how far out of Kabul we were. He conferred with the driver, who estimated that Kabul was only two hours away.



No sooner was I wondering whether I should fry or broil the fish for dinner when the driver catapulted us into a muddy rock-strewn puddle, which rocked the car off its springs, bounced us up into the roof, and saw the little Corolla stutter to a halt on a rained-out straightaway halfway between two bends in the road. It wasn't the first time that the car has sputtered and died, but this time was different - whenever the driver would hit the ignition, the car would wheeze and cough to no visible effect.



He tried starting the car for a few minutes. No luck.



He went out, opened the hood, wiggled some parts around, and tried again. Still no luck.



As time went by, we all filed out of the car and waded into inch-deep mud to see what was going on under the hood (other than 'nothing'). The weather was cool, but not chilly, and in any case, I had brought thermal underwear, wool socks, thick boots, and a wool coat for the trip to and from allegedly-tropical Pakistan. My fellow passengers, decked out in dress shoes and airy shalwar kameezes - the two-piece tunic and pants combo that is everywhere in rural Afghanistan and much of Pakistan - were not so lucky.



I immediately determined that I had no business trying to fix a car, so I hung around by the side of the road listening to the roaring Kabul River, which was a striking contrast from the section of the same river that pathetically dribbled its way through Kabul itself, providing a slightly grassy place for Kabulis to graze their goats and throw their trash.



Over the next two-and-a-half hours, the driver and several helpful passers-by struggled to get the car to work. We even tried pushing the car up the mountain through the mud, which didn't work and only soiled everyone's dress shoes (my boots *still* have a gray residue from the gallons of mud that got everywhere, including my coat, pants, and backpack.)



At one point, our driver found part of an old steel cable and got the bright idea tie our bumper to another car's bumper. First challenge -- find a car that would let us tie another car to it. Surprisingly, a few cars stopped to try out this crazy scheme, which I was sure would be a disaster on such a rocky, bumpy trail through the mountains. The first attempt looked promising, with the car ahead of us hitting the gas, tightening the cable, and dragging us about 20 feet through the rocks - until we hit a pothole and our fearless driver's poorly-tied knot came undone, prompting the helpful tow-car to pause for a second, then give up and just keep driving, content that he'd done his best to help us.



Another guy offered to tow our car to the next town, about a 30-minute drive . . . for about US$10. "What kind of Muslim would ask for that?" asked Fraidoon after we refused the offer and held out for a fix or a freebie. It was a line that kept coming back to us whenever cars would pass by without stopping, despite our appeals for help.



But several cars still stopped and out would pop a backseat mechanic who was sure he could fix whatever was wrong. One such car pulled up behind us as we were all milling around by the river during the waning minutes of light. I was so bored with the succession of would-be mechanics that I didn't take any immediate notice of this one. But after he walked by me and peered into the hood, I finally got a good look at him.



I immediately noticed that the guy was a Taliban.



How?



You have to step back to the first time I had entered Peshawar, back with my Afghan friend Josh, who really pronounces his name Joosh, and is called Sullyman by most Afghans I work with, though at home with his family he is called Naveed, but his real name is Said. It's as simple as that.



Anyway, as we rolled down the crowded Technicolor streets of Peshawar in late December, my friend Josh nodded towards a pair of guys he said were Taliban. "Where?" I asked, looking at a street crammed with people. As the car slowly passed through congested traffic, Josh described two guys who I immediately picked out of the crowd - they had white skullcaps, narrow white turbans tied around those skullcaps, and noticeably short (as in, high off their ankles) shalwar kameezes. Armed with information on what to look for, I started scanning the crowds in the bloated bazaars as we drove deeper into Peshawar, and would occasionally catch glimpses of Josh-defined Taliban.



And now back on the road to Kabul, I was catching another glimpse of a Taliban. And in fact, as I looked from the alleged mechanic to the stopped car, I noticed that a carload of Taliban had parked next to us.



My eyes probably bulged for a second, and I immediately turned away from the car and everyone else, going back to the camouflage squint mode I used to get up the Khyber Pass without getting the minibus pulled over. A few minutes passed, and apparently the erstwhile Taliban mechanic was no match for our Toyota's high technology, so he and his friends went on their way.



By now it was getting dark, and after a few hours and more than a few failed attempts to repair the car, I was wondering how we'd get back to Kabul and whether or not we'd be sleeping out on the notorious Jalalabad Road all night.



Long after the sun set, the light finally turned into deep shadow, and our driver was still under the hood fiddling with wires and screws and whatever else he could find to tweak. I figured that he couldn't see anything, so I stepped over with my keychain flashlight and lit up the parts of the car that he was trying to take out of the car.



The driver's eyes lit up and his screwdriver froze. Apparently he hadn't been able to see inside most of the car parts or even get a good idea of how to detach the various parts. Now, two-and-a-half hours after the car broke down and stranded us in the middle of nowhere, the driver could finally see what he was doing. He quickly unscrewed what I gather was the ignition, then disassembled it under the dim red light from my keychain. He opened the housing and I shone my light inside to reveal . . . a cavity soaked with water.



This was apparently not supposed to be wet, and with a few wipes from an oily rag, the driver dried out the inside of the casing, replaced all the parts, and slammed down the hood. We climbed in the car and prepared to try starting the car again. But then the driver said something else, and everyone in the backseat jumped out again.



"What's going on?" I asked.



"We have to push the car," said Fraidoon.



"Uh," I said, "okay." And in moments, we were out leaning the car up the middy incline.



"Why are we pushing the car?" I asked as we took our first step.



"We give it a push for Allah," he replied, "so he knows what the car is supposed to do," and with that the driver hit the ignition, the car started, we climbed in, and we were back on our way to Kabul. Allah had come through for us, but he wasn't making it easy.



By now it was dark, and it became clear that we didn't have much in the way of headlights to get us back to Kabul. (In fact, I later noticed that we had one headlight and one taillight, which was actually better than a lot of other cars on the roads in Afghanistan - but it still meant that we didn't have much light for the driver to be able to pick his way over the rubble that counted as a road.) It was about 5:30, and it would take us at least another two hours to reach Kabul if everything went smoothly. Or so I had been told.



We made decent but slow progress up through the mountains for the next hour and a half, snaking along next to the river in the dark with our one dim headlight and bouncing off rock pools the whole way. Anybody who would have stuck their tongue out would have had it bitten off from the jarring jumps that the poor little Corolla had to endure.



Then at about a quarter after seven, a trail of red lights appeared in front of us and we skidded to a quick halt. Hundreds of cars were stopped in both lanes of the road, with trucks off to the right and smaller cars off to the left. It wasn't a one-lane road, but something had obviously happened ahead, and nobody was going anywhere. The trucks were dark and empty, as if abandoned. There was no telling how long they'd been parked there, but it didn't seem as if anyone had plans to move in the near future. Even the cars were mostly dark, with shadowy shapes inside illuminated by the occasional headlight that would flash on and then turn off.



We sat in the car talking for about a half hour as the driver fidgeted with the radio, turning up some news in Dari and an occasional Hindi pop song. Our reception was complicated by the depth of the gorge and our distance from Kabul, and tinny, fuzzed-out voices were our company when we eventually tired of talking.



What I didn't know at the time, but which I had basically guessed, was that at a hairpin turn on the mud-caked road on the edge of a cliff a half-mile ahead, two commercial trucks had met. There was simply no way for both of them to pass each other. My guess is that they had hit the brakes and paused to think about how to handle this, but as they did so, drivers in other cars did what they usually do in Afghanistan - they crowded right up to their bumpers and started blasting the horns. Soon a few cars turned into a few dozen cars. And in Afghanistan, there is no going backwards. The road was closed, not due to rockfall or a mudslide, as I had expected before, but due to Afghan driving tactics.



At a quarter to eight, I checked the clock, heard the driver turn off the car like nearly everyone ahead of us, resigned myself to the idea that we were going nowhere tonight, and shut my eyes to get some sleep.



In the middle of the night in Afghanistan, the only sounds we could hear were our fuzzy radio and the gently crashing river beside us, which echoed off the sides of the gorge we were in and pushed its way towards the twinkling stars above.



But did we ever get past that cliffside traffic jam?

Did anyone remember to bring food and water for the trip?

And what happened when we got two flat tires . . . but only had one spare?



It looks like I'll have to answer those questions in the next installment . . .