The attack on the Intercontinental Hotel Tuesday night by 8 Taliban members who slipped through security checkpoints on the road leading up the hill to the hotel’s main entrance remind me how fortunate I was to be there in 1970. I’d been in Afghanistan for a year and a half as a Peace Corps volunteer working on smallpox vaccinating teams in the remote areas of the country. Trips into Kabul were my R&R including meals in Afghan restaurants, an old American movie at the downtown theater sometimes, and partying with other PCVs. The enormous-looking hotel seemed like an aberration at first, an intrusion into the ancient world still so intact.
But there were advantages. Experienced travelers my parents’ age came through that spring on a trip to India and Pakistan. I shared my love of Afghan culture and people for the few days of their visit. They came because Kabul now had a hotel approved by their tour company. The day I dropped in on them there, I’m reminded, I gazed longingly at the modern bath and was invited to fill the tub and soak as long as I wished. I don’t recall the luxury of this, but know there was no working indoor plumbing where I’d lived in Kunduz and Puli-kumri north of Kabul and a real scarcity of water where I stayed in Kabul. One of our Peace Corps group says her solution to this in the fourth rate hotels we used when in Kabul was to bathe in a pot of tea, an item readily available.
A Peace Corps friend reminded me this week that The Intercontinental for him was a place to go for ice cream when he came up from Jalalabad. Some of the help spoke English, and some comforts of The West had made their way to a “city that was called a city, but was not a city.” (Lynn LaFroth, PCV 1969-1970) How lucky we were to be there before the terror and violence of a night raid by Afghans on their countrymen who too sought the comfort a luxury hotel for an evening or so with family and friends.
dirtroaddocs 