© Michael Obert

30 years after the hippies traveled through Kabul on their way to India tourism aroused again in the Afghan capital – despite war, crisis and kidnappings. Between Japanese tourists with cameras and Pashtuns with kalashnikovs travel journalist Michael Obert feels as being stuck in the theater of the absurd. If only there wasn’t this damn Kabul-cough.

I’m going to be the only tourist in Kabul. At least, that’s what I was thinking as the plane from Dubai touched down between military helicopters and fighter jets. Less than three hours later, I witness the following: a small man, holding up a tiny banner, walking amongst the rubble of several bombed-out buildings, followed by people with white sun hats and sky-blue lip protection, who are busily snapping off photos of bullet holes in the walls of the buildings – a Japanese tour group.

Kabul is a funny city. Does that sound absurd? Good. Very good. The Theater of the Absurd was invented in France as a means of demonstrating the insanity of the world and the lost people within it. Not to mention as a reaction to the horror of two world wars. And today, Afghanistan has produced a more contemporary variety. It’s called Kabul.

In the city center, I am confronted with the feeling of the absurd on every street corner. A shepherd leads his flock through the endless stream of cars, minibuses, and mopeds. A Landcruiser with TV screens in the seats overtakes a donkey cart, whose owner has nailed on the license plate of a car. In the restaurant Deutscher Hof, Gunter Völker from Tabarz, Thuringia, serves traditional knuckle of pork and sauerkraut along with German dark beer on tap.

© Michael Obert

On the street, a woman stretches out a hand to me with festering craters where her fingers once were. There are internet cafes with Italian espresso machines and high-speed connections. Everywhere cell phones are ringing and SIM cards are being sold, along with hands-free phone kits and EasyChargers. A sign advertises: „Bike Rental, Car Rental, Security Service with up to 3,000 Armed Men.“ And in the bazaar, where alcohol is forbidden, merchants offer their cooking oil in 4.5 liter Johnny Walker bottles into which they drop large-format photos of half naked women – sex sells. Even in Afghanistan.

In the past few years, Kabul’s population has shot up to an estimated four million. The city can’t cope with so many people: mountains of trash, water shortages, inadequate hygiene. There is a danger that cholera and dysentery could become epidemic, the child mortality rate counts among the highest in the world, and the traffic is murderous enough, let alone the air. Ten years ago, there were so few vehicles in Kabul that one could walk down the middle of the street. Now, a roaring, smoldering cascade of metal forces itself through even the smallest side streets. Countless generators poison the air. At night, the headlights of cars are refracted in exhaust, turning the city into a shadow play. In addition, the wind stirs up dust from the rubble of buildings and vapor off of fields fertilized with excrement. Sometimes human. Sooner or later everyone gets the Kabul-cough. Compared to this city, Lima or Calcutta is a health spa in the Alps.

© Michael Obert

I’m staying at the Mustafa, a mid-range hotel. My cell is just big enough for the plank I’m sleeping on. There’s no fan. Pinkish red plaster peels from the walls. The toilet is at the end of the hall. At night, the power goes out. I feel my way back through the darkness of the long corridor – when suddenly, I bump into someone. Resisting the urge to scream, I become aware of a long robe, beneath it, something hard. My hands graze a beard – a rather luxurious beard. When the lights go back on, I find I’m embracing a Hun-like Pashtun in a nightgown. He indicates his machine gun and says, „AK 47. Good. Very good.“ Then we say good night.

In the morning, I meet a group of American tourists in the bazaar. They’ve booked a „Kabul City Tour“, part of a package tour that takes customers on a daylong excursion to visit all of the sights: mosques, mausoleums, the gardens, the Bird Bazaar, and the old fortress walls. All of this is organized by a company by the name of the Great Game Travel Company. There are two other similar travel companies in the city. Slowly, it becomes clear to me: Kabul has discovered tourism. Despite war, crises, and kidnappings, excursions are still available to see the remains of the Stone Buddha of Bamiyan, as well as hiking tours in the northern province of Badakhshan.

The pioneers of the travel scene are already sending kayaks down the Panshir River, going snowboarding in the Hindu Kush, and floating on hang gliders over the sapphire-blue Band-e-Amir lakes. I meet a Czech backpack tourist, leafing through a guidebook: „Afghanistan“ – hot off the presses from Lonely Planet.

Michael Obert, born in 1966, is a German book author and journalist who writes for Geo, Stern and other periodicals in Germany, Switzerland and Austria, as well for Courrier International (Paris), The Journal (New York) and Himal Southasian (Katmandu). He reports mainly from Africa, Latin America, and Central Asia, and has written books on the Islamic world. Obert currently lives in Berlin. „Camping in Kabul” was also published in his book „Die Ränder der Welt“.