Ed is in Chicago

It’s been a rocky week, and I am only just coming out of a weird externally induced work paralysis that has left me unable to either work or relax.

The post-elections violence hasn’t helped. A couple of days ago the UN announced ‘White City’ due to a suicide bombing of a bunch of new recruits for the Afghan army – 8 dead. It means that our movement is limited now and there are more attacks threatened.

What is more, we have bad news from our friend in Mazar, the Young Archaeologist, who has been working with what he described as a ‘very rich and very good’ parliamentary candidate, for whom he has been writing speeches and generally helping out. On Tuesday night, this very same candidate Mr Ashraf Ramazan, was assassinated. The Young Archaeologist sounded understandably rattled – he could have been in that car also. I got an affecting letter from him today, delievered by hand along with his application to study archaeology in Chicago which he wants me to proof:

“On Tuesday evening at 6:10 my candidate Mr Ashraf Ramazan and his body guard were killed by unknown persons.
Now, I’m very sad and sad,
Not I have not any thing for speak, I had loved him very much, because he was a very good man, and was very famuse in Balkh, he was a yang man by a good feeling.
Oh. This happen is very sad.”

There are some good stories associated with the elections though. For all the messiness and danger and bloodshed, this is not Iraq, and something impressive has happened. Of course the jury is still out until we see how many war criminals are in parliament.

But it is noticeable how many people assured me that they would not vote for the sullied old guard, in favour of pretty any much any newcomer instead. The man from whom my Young Bride purchase her new Roshan sim card – a recently arrived Pakistani-born entrepreneur who told us very proundly how many languages he could speak, without having been to school - said that he planned to vote for Sabrina – and you could see why. I would probably have voted for her too, knowing nothing about any of the other candidates except the most notorious. Sabrina’s posters stuck out very noticeably amongst the incredible crush of innocuous faces pasted around Kabul. For a start she was the only one smiling. And a WOMAN smiling at that. Then there is the fact that she is young and good looking with an eyecatching yellow headscarf – I was told she is 24 or 26, and grew up in Iran. This is not surprising – you can’t imagine a girl used to the grinding Kabul routine of being started at if you brazenly show any hair would campaign with such a comparatively raunchy style.

It isn’t the only case of female candidates causing a stir. A lot of men have said they will vote for women as they are not seen as being sullied by the years of violence (I am not sure about this – the common argument that ‘if women ruled the world, everything would be peaceful’ does not stand up to much scrutiny if one looks at actual examples of women politicians, and there is no reason that women politicians in Afghanistan should not turn out to be corrupt and venial and brutal and incompetent as any of the others). But also there seems to be a common element of ‘sex sells’ in a very Afghan way. I have heard that the campaign posters of a female candidate in Herat have even been changing hands for cash – private cars and taxis being adorned with the pictures as they might be with any doe-eyed hindi heroine from the silver screen.