CHAPTER 8
MESSAGE IN A BOTTLE
Many Afghans were not happy with the direction the country was heading, especially conservatives. And in the middle of this disgust, Abdul Jabar Sabit, a windmill-slaying Afghan lawyer, saw an opportunity. As legal adviser for the Interior Ministry, his job description was somewhat vague, so he decided to declare war on alcohol and brothels, to stem the tide of foreign excess. He had launched a one-man anti-vice mission, a pared-down version of the Taliban’s Vice and Virtue Ministry, that notorious charm offensive responsible for enforcing the regime’s straitjacket-like morality rules. And in so doing, Sabit had seized on the mood of many Afghans, who felt that the Westerners were just too much—too free with their booze, too loose with their morals, and too influential over young Afghans.
Even though alcohol was illegal, the Afghan government had permitted a two-tiered society—one for Afghans, and one for Westerners. Foreigners could buy booze at two major stores that required passports at the door. Restaurants could serve alcohol to foreigners but not to Afghans, which meant most restaurants that served alcohol did not allow Afghans. The contradiction fueled resentment from everyone. Many Afghans viewed alcohol as more pernicious, more Western and un-Islamic, than opium or hashish. More liberal Afghans figured they should be allowed to drink alcohol inside the restaurants, which were, after all, in their country. Every time Sabit announced another booze battle, Farouq would shake his head.
“The price of raisins is going to go up,” he would say. Raisin wine was a concoction made popular during Taliban rule, along with antiseptic and Coca-Cola.
I had first met Sabit in the spring of 2005, in the office of the Interior Ministry spokesman. He had left Afghanistan during the late 1970s and landed first in Pakistan, then the United States, where he worked for Voice of America before moving to Canada. He had joined Gulbuddin Hekmatyar’s fundamentalist Islamic party, Hezb-i-Islami, back when Hekmatyar was on our side against the Soviets and before he had turned into a renegade. After the Taliban fell, Sabit, a lawyer by training, had come back to Afghanistan, part of the flood of returning Afghans who claimed they wanted to help rebuild their country. He was an ally of Karzai’s—kind of—although he complained all the time about Karzai. Then again, Sabit complained about a lot. He was a human volcano, constantly threatening to explode.
Sabit, who was in his sixties, was a bizarre combination, sporting the long white beard of an Islamic fundamentalist and the bespoke gray suit of an English gentleman. He was an ethnic Pashtun, and he looked it, with wild white hair, bright hazel eyes, and exaggerated features—big ears, big fingers. He reminded me of a skinny yet somehow menacing Santa Claus. Sabit had asked where I lived, and after I told him how often I traveled, he grunted. He quoted a Pashtun proverb about never being friends with a traveler. But that didn’t stop him from trying. At our first meeting, he invited me to his house to meet his wife, a raven-haired woman about my age. Although she was fluent in at least three languages, including English, and had been working on a doctorate degree in Canada, she was not allowed to work. For appearance’s sake. Whenever she went out in public, she wore a black abaya that covered everything but her eyes.
During that first dinner, Sabit had agreed to take me along on a raid of bars and brothels on the coming Friday night. But when Friday rolled around, I had forgotten about our date, and by the time his driver called, I had already downed a glass of red wine. Regardless, I jumped in the backseat of Sabit’s SUV, filled with his flunkies. We then picked up Sabit, who on this night wore a long cape-like green coat with purple stripes, similar to the coat favored by Karzai. We went from brothel to bar to restaurant. Everywhere, Sabit was the customer no one wanted. As soon as he knocked on a gate, whoever answered shouted out warnings. But he wouldn’t take no for an answer and pushed his way inside, flanked by his minions—and me, of course.
At one dark brothel with bordello-red walls, a Chinese woman had dressed in a fur jacket, fishnet stockings, a white miniskirt, and white boots—a bit of overkill, given the all-encompassing burqas that many Afghan women still wore.
“Look at that,” Sabit muttered. The only customer was a Western man, sitting by himself.
At another fully stocked bar, Sabit insulted the Turkish manager.
“You are Muslim, aren’t you?” Sabit said. “You aren’t allowed to serve this liquor.”
“We are Muslim,” the man replied. “But this is business.”
The night ended in violence, as did so many things in Afghanistan. After we checked on a guesthouse, even inspecting the bedrooms, a cop on the street failed to properly address Sabit and show him enough respect. Sabit yelled and screamed at the man. I hopped in the backseat of the SUV. Sabit continued to yell, and then started punching the younger man repeatedly in the face, the body. I watched through the window.
“You have to help him,” his driver told me. “Mr. Sabit is a crazy man. I’m too scared.”
“No way,” I said. “I’m going nowhere near him.”
Sabit climbed into the passenger seat after making sure the ignorant officer was carted off to jail for the night. He adjusted his coat and looked forward.
“Write that in your story, and I’ll kill you,” he said.
I wasn’t stupid. And I knew a good connection when I found one. From then on, whenever we planned an occasional gathering at a brothel or a major party, I would call Sabit and ask him what he was doing. If he planned to go on raids, I planned to stay home. And that’s how I knew that The Delicious Barbecue was a safe bet.
But Sabit required a lot of care and feeding, and he was often impossible to please. Even showing slight annoyance with Sabit’s demands sent him into months of silence and furious complaints about me to mutual acquaintances. Just after I returned to India, Sabit flew to New Delhi to have surgery for something related to his ability to digest, a procedure he was incredibly explicit about. He demanded that I pick him up at the airport. I spent five hours waiting for him inside the Indian capital’s dingy airport before he finally wandered into the lobby, several hours after all the other Afghans. Only then, I found out that the Afghan embassy had also sent a welcome delegation and a car. After Sabit was admitted to the hospital, he expected me to visit every day, a time suck of at least three hours. I was his lifeline in Delhi, the only person he seemed to know, despite the fact that the embassy treated him like royalty. Deferential men with beards always sat in his hospital room.
“You have lived over here long enough,” he admonished me from his hospital bed. “You know Afghans. You know the culture. You know you need to come see me.”
“I also have to work,” I said. “It’s kind of the reason I’m here.”
“Work. You’re always working.”
Even the surgery didn’t calm him. “This green tea is awful,” he complained from his bed. “Bring me some new tea.”
Eventually, after helping sort out his tea and his visa, I sent my driver to take Sabit to the airport to fly home. But he was annoyed because I did not ride along. Over the winter, I heard rumors that Sabit was upset with me. “She’s a bad friend,” he told an official at the U.S. embassy. I called Sabit from India repeatedly, and he repeatedly hung up on me. When he finally answered, he sounded as hurt as a spurned lover.