Afghanistan, July-August 1969 – Page 3

Salahiyah, 10.6.19

A short spin in Ghazi’s [illegible] car from Dar El Said northward, and the grey asphalt ceased and we were bumping and swaying over an ill-defined track across the heavy loam – the furrowed brown face of clay-flat Kurdistan. In less than half an hour we were clear of the town’s untidy outskirts, alone between the chaman of the sheepfolds and the hovels of the villagers.

It is a desolate and squalid land, whose tillers know only privation and fatigue. Their villages are hovels of stone and mud-brick, clustering in mean disorder about wells and threshing floors; shaded poorly by rushes and feeble fruit trees.

On the horizon

Eastward a far line of low crumpled hills lay like clouds on the garish plain. On the their shattered flank was the fort of Kalak, and beyond, patched with snow, the huge bulk of the Persian frontier range, cutting with cruel and fantastic shapes the blue sky along its shrivelled crest.

All around us lay the flatness and sombre of Kurdistan. Black smeared clouds of ravens were cawing hoarsely, or quartered the plain on heavy wing: half the flocks of the whole Kurdistan seemed assembled in the air for carrion gathering. Indeed the ravens were more numerous than the flocks of [illegible]sheep and gaunt cattle: though these were not few, wandering in disconsolate black and brown bunches under the rayless sky.