The Taliban Shuffle_ Strange Days in Afghanistan and Pakistan - Kim Barker [109]
My onetime shooting buddy, Sabit, had failed so miserably as attorney general that his name was now a joke. I felt bad for him, even if I was still wary of seeing him. His moral high ground had been gradually eroded, his credibility erased. Warlords had continued to humiliate him publicly. His temper had alienated everyone. Western diplomats had started treating him a bit like a drunk uncle at a holiday party. But even as I pitied him, Sabit also shared the blame for the broken justice system and what it had become—one of the biggest failures of the international community and the government.
Finally Sabit had gone too far, even for Karzai. The previous summer, in a fit of pique, Sabit announced he was running for president. Karzai immediately fired him. The jokes started—a video appeared on TV and on YouTube, allegedly showing Sabit dancing at a party. The video was fuzzy, and Sabit’s face couldn’t be seen, but it was entitled “Afghanistan Attorney General, Dancing Drunk.” The New York Times later sealed the deal, reporting that the video showed Sabit dancing giddily, slurring his words, apparently drunk. I didn’t think that the dancing man was Sabit—but as usual in Afghanistan, the truth didn’t matter. His fall was complete. Afghanistan’s Don Quixote, who rode to power tilting at brothels and booze, was finished.
Things deteriorated further. I was going slightly stir-crazy after imposing my own security lockdown due to all the attacks and kidnappings. So right before leaving Afghanistan, I decided to see old friends, making use of my new driver. On a Friday afternoon, I dropped by a going-away party for a stranger at a security-guy hangout with its own bar. Within half an hour, I wanted out. After extensive instructions, my driver picked up three of us to go to L’Atmosphère. He couldn’t find it. Our conflicting directions probably didn’t help.
“Doesn’t he know where anything is?” a friend asked.
“Apparently not,” I answered.
“How did you find this guy?”
“Farouq.”
“This isn’t safe,” she said. “The situation’s too bad to be just driving around with no idea where we are. I want to talk to Farouq.”
I called Farouq. This was probably not a good idea. This was Friday, Farouq’s day off. In an attempt to show how productive I was, how useful I was, I had been pushing Farouq harder than in years, harder than he was used to working. I listened to my friend tell Farouq how the young man didn’t know enough to be a driver. She was right—but this conversation would have fallout. She was challenging Farouq’s Pashtun-ness and questioning him in a way that was not good. Farouq wanted to talk to the driver, then me. He was icy.
“He is just a boy. He is just learning. And you’re making him work too late at night.”
“If I’m paying $50 a day for a driver, he has to work,” I said. “And it’s only eight o’clock.”
The next week, Farouq told me the driver could not work in the evenings.
“Because of the situation,” Farouq said. “He’s just a boy.”
The attacks in Afghanistan were almost always between seven and ten in the morning, and we had adjusted our schedule accordingly. Only one major attack had been at night.
“I don’t get it,” I said. “Nothing ever happens at night.”
“Something might,” Farouq said.
Right before I left Kabul, the driver again couldn’t remember where a restaurant was. Farouq wasn’t in the car.
“I can’t believe this,” I complained. “My company is paying a lot of money for a driver, and you can’t remember where anything is.”
I had assumed I was paying $50 for a driver, and $100 for Farouq. But apparently Farouq and his employee had a different deal. The poor guy, struggling with his English, tried to understand me. He looked at me, and tried to explain himself in a combination of Dari and English.
“No. Not a lot.”
“How much do you make?”