Medieval Survivor in a War-Torn Land

We are at the Bagh-e-Babor, literally the Gardens of Babar, named after the Central Asian princeling from the Ferghana valley (now in Uzbekistan) who won Hindustan in 1526 AD and returned to Kabul to die four years later. Karim, my friend-and-guide-for-the-day, has brought me here after a bumpy car ride because I want to see the mazaar of India’s first Mughal emperor.

Both the little mosque and the mazaar (the tombstone) are at the head of the gardens, built on the incline of the hill. The houses perched above are the colour of mud, camouflaged against the backdrop of the mud-coloured hill range. This part of Kabul seems to have escaped the worst excesses of both the Taliban — perhaps, in their zeal at recreating the Stone Age, they simply forgot about medieval king Babar — and the American bombing, which means that the age-old Afghan camouflage trick worked. If You Can’t Confront Your Enemy, Melt Away, Until You Are Strong Enough To Defeat Him.

Both the mosque and Babar’s tomb are a magnificent surprise. Little gems of marble, in the architectural style that you see scattered across the sub-continent, with a very simple mehrab. The roof of the tombstone, open on all sides, is caving in, but the inscription in Dari, about ‘Zahiruddin Babar Shah’ remains intact. Still, Karim is unable to figure out the antiquity of both the mosque and the tombstone. Were they really built nearly 500 years ago? Nobody has an answer.

By this time, the little kids from the pool below have surrounded me. Who was Babar, I ask them. Nobody knows. Does anyone go to school, I persist. Only one little fellow named Najib, with a wide smile across his sunbaked cheeks, nods his head. Karim comes to their rescue. When your country has been ravaged by war for 22 years, there’s more than one generation lost to education. Of course, he looks at me reprovingly, nobody knows who Babar is. The unspoken words follow. There’s no point living in the past.

But you can’t escape the gruesome past in Kabul. The Taliban legacy dominates everything else, making the decade of Soviet rule from 1979-1989 shine like a progressive beacon in comparison. Whether it’s the local stadium, where beheadings and amputations were carried out by the erstwhile Ministry of Vice and Virtue, or the Kabul hotel, bombed out at one end, or the square next to the presidential palace where, in 1997, Najibullah was shot and hung from a lamp post.

Still, there’s a new spring in the air. The old Kabuliwallah is alive and well at the Mandavi spice market but it is the new Kabuliwallah and his female counterpart who will herald in the brave, new Afghanistan.

Like the air-hostesses who fly Ariana Airlines and smile excitedly about the time they met Amitabh Bachchan in Mumbai during the recent training with Air India. Like the friendly bouncers outside the Inter-Continental hotel in their brand new uniforms with gold braid and red piping, which, admittedly, sit awkwardly on them. Like the soldiers in newish battle fatigues guarding the Polytechnic grounds — where the CII put up a ‘Made In India’ trade fair last week — cradling their Kalashnikovs with more than some enthusiasm. Chief guest Marshal Fahim, once a key lieutenant of Ahmad Shah Masood and now Defence minister, epitomises the transformation by wearing a business suit.

Still, it’s the image of the young woman sitting on the parapet around the Bagh-e-Babor that lingers. Her lips are carefully outlined with lipstick, her pants are casually pulled up to her calves, she’s not even wearing a headscarf. Around her, the setting sun is beginning to turn the mountain ranges into a mirage. Another day in the up and down life of Afghani-stan has just come to an end.