Dangers and Delights of Jogging in Kabul

K A B U L, Afghanistan, April 26, 2002 -- Kabul has everything a jogger hates — traffic, pollution, dust, uneven, pot-holed roads and trails, and residents who love to stare, follow and even toss the occasional rock at foreign passers-by.

I was sure Kabul was a good place to forget exercise, but I found out today I was wrong. In a place where foreigners too often tend to see the country from behind the windows of air-conditioned SUV's, a jog is a great way to slow down and feel the place.

My first run started at the Kabul stadium — scene of frequent executions during the Taliban and a weekly soccer game today. Some reporters here have taken to running laps around the track, but I decided to head for the suburbs — through the many adobe-walled villages surrounding the city.

The streets here transport you back in time. Except for the intermittent power lines, the homes look like the set of Ben Hur. Waddle and daub walls, pounded dirt floors, open sewers in ditches down the middle of tiny alleyways. Forty-five percent of children die before their first birthday.

Innocence Amid Destruction

But the streets and alleys are still filled with children's laughter — especially when a lumbering, 6 foot-3 American jogs by. As schools let out at 10:30 a.m., I ran through a sea of bemused, frenetic, ogling pre-teens. The group quickly thinned to six or seven amateur joggers and leading the pack was a thin, smiling, dark-haired boy who had no trouble keeping up.

With my nominal Pashtu, I found out his name was Anwar and he's 11 years old. He looked about 7. But he had a runner's gait. And every few minutes he'd dash ahead, daring me to catch up.

With Anwar at my side, I recognized the village where I'd been shooting for a story the day before. A few yards down the hill from where I was running was a house that had been leveled by an errant U.S. bomb during the first days of the war. Two kids who recognized me screamed with delight when they spotted me. Azizullah, a 21-year-old who lost his left leg in the attack also came out. He was wearing his artificial leg. My gut knotted as I ran by him.

Games People Play

A half-mile farther I came across a group of boys playing with a sparkling new white volleyball. I was happy to stop. (Kabul sits at about 6,000 feet above sea-level, and and the thin air made me feel 150 years old.) They out-classed me immediately — perfect, feather-light sets, solid spikes. I kept belting the ball onto the roof of their house. They loved it.

Moving on, I jumped back and forth over a meandering ditch that served as gutter (and probably sewer as well.) A boy in his teens offered to sell me supposedly racy pictures of women. They were fully clothed, probably Pakistani pop-stars. An occasional taxi scared up a cloud of dust, but the air was cleaner and clearer than downtown. I could breathe easily for the first time in days.

The younger kids just up the street had a different game. They tossed a red sock filled with rags at each other. When I picked up the ball and threw it back to them, they begged for me to throw it harder. "No, really nail me", they seemed to be saying in Pashtu. I threw a half-speed lob at one kid running away.

I came across a field of tall brick ovens resembling brown candles with blackened tops. They are kilns where Afghans bake the bricks that are used to build just about everything here — walls, houses, and the kilns themselves. Thick black smoke spewed out the tops. Wet mud bricks waiting to be fired spread out around them like a clay skirt

About three miles from the start, I came to the hill that had been my goal. As I ran up to the top for a view of the city, I remembered my land mine awareness training from the day before. Never leave the road in unfamiliar areas. A few graves lined the side of the path, each with a stone at each end, facing each-other for men, facing sideways for women.

A uniformed soldier ran up to me shouting, I thought to warn me away, but he just wanted to say "hi." He let me hold his single-barreled shotgun. On the side, it said "Made in Russia" in English. I was happy to see he carried it unloaded. After a customary handshake, I turned around to retrace my steps and head home.