Funny sad story

Hoelun’s Adventures in Afghaniland

A funny/sad story about the elections and crime

An Afghan friend of mine (a shopkeeper on Chicken Street) was recently so gracious as to drive me and a visitor around Kabul to show us the sites (go see the Sultani Museum if you haven’t yet. )

This was during election time and posters were plastered everywhere. I expressed the desire to get one as a souvenir, and asked Ayoub if he would stop somewhere where I could grab one. Technically this is illegal and carries a penalty of one day in an Afghan jail, but walls, fences, posts, trees, etc. were plastered with them, so I didn’t feel too guilty that taking one would interfere with the electoral process too much. I know that I am on shaky ground with that justification, but at the time it worked and my wall is now graced by Gulaili staring imperiously at me from her poster and heavy-cover headscarf promising work and justice. Sometimes crime does pay.

Anyway… Ayoub turned into a small lane by a park fence covered in posters tied on with string my visitor and I ran quickly up to a poster tied to the park fence, and after bargaining for and buying sunglasses from a boy hawking them to make him go away, we tore Gulaili’s poster off the fence and ran back to the car as quickly as possible (two Westerners, one of them female, tearing madly at an election poster probably attracted more attention than if we had just been calm and slow about it, but haste was part of the fun).

After this, Ayoub saw what we had taken and laughed. “I wish that you had told me about your wish for an election poster three days ago,” he said. “One of the candidates’ men came by my shop and asked me to hang a poster in my shop window.”

Me: “Do you still have it?”

Ayoub: “I didn’t take it.”

Me: Oh, too bad. (around now I am still thinking that he didn’t support the candidate).

Ayoub: Yeah, well we couldn’t agree on how much he should pay me. He wanted to give me one amount, but I have a good location and should get more for it.

So, basically Afghan politics are the exact opposite of US politics and exactly the same: in the US, companies pay the candidates. In Afghanistan, camdidates pay the companies. And in both countries those who don’t pay anyone generally get what they paid for.