Christmas in Kabul

Today and PM from BBC Radio 4 are broadcast live on BFBS – British Forces Broadcasting Service which is available wherever there are British troops. It's nice to get the Radio 4 news – even though Today is on at lunchtime and I listen to PM while getting ready for bed. In the run-up to Christmas, I listened with interest to the discussion about how the putting up of Christmas decorations in schools and offices could be offensive to people of a different religion/culture.

I am part of a minority in a country with a different culture and religion. Afghanistan is an Islamic Republic and its Constitution states that no law can be passed that contravenes Islam. It is a country that is still fighting the Taleban, where many women still wear the burqa (and in some cities you don’t even see women in public) and recently an man was given asylum in Italy after narrowly escaping the death penalty in an Afghan court for converting to Christianity.

Many of my Afghan colleagues have wished me a Merry Christmas and have asked about how I would celebrate Christmas if I were at home – and why do we wish for a white Christmas? And in a few days when it is Eid Zuha I will wish them in return, Eid Mubarak. There are no concerns about being offensive; all that is important is that we have respect and understanding for each other's culture.

How was Christmas in Kabul? It snowed for most of Christmas Eve, and this is what greeted me when I open the door on Christmas morning:


For those of us working with the UN/international organisations it was an official holiday. Though many internationals are away on leave (and some only just managed to depart as fog and then snow descended on Kabul a few days ago and the problems with the airport are not yet fixed (in bad weather planes can take off, but have problems landing; see post Destination Kandahar…?). We who remained had a couple of options – to go to one of the restaurants who were offering special Christmas menus or gather together and do it ourselves.

I had Christmas lunch with 14 other people (of varied nationality – Australian, Canadian, British, Brazilian, El Salvadorian and Swedish) and it was an amazing spread. There were 2 kinds of soup, turkey, roast vegetables, slow-cooked chicken, prawn curry, seafood risotto, nut roast, vegetable lasagne, turnip bake, salsa and then orange cake, Christmas pudding, pavlova, nutballe (a Swedish confection), chocolate brownies, Christmas cookies. And by the end of the afternoon we had the traditional feeling of having eaten too much... Apart from the turkey, salsa and chocolate brownies it was all done in one kitchen – with one oven. One room in the house was turned into a walk-in fridge – the windows were just left open, proving that there are some advantages to the weather being 0°C.

I provided the chocolate brownies, but I had originally been tasked to make mince pies, but I was unable to find mincemeat in Kabul – I even asked a British Lt Col at the main ISAF base.…but no luck, obviously I was overly optimistic to think that I could find it here in Kabul! The Christmas pudding came from Marks and Spencer (bought in London back in early October) and the pavlova instead of the traditional strawberries was decorated with pomegranate seeds. It and the chocolate brownies had a thin burnt crust on the bottom – which is not an indication of how bad the cooks were – but a symptom of attempting to bake in difficult circumstances. Both were cooked with gas, but the ovens here don’t have graduated temperature settings – so you have to guess which setting you need by how much gas you see. And at 2000m above sea level the gas does not burn effectively, so it is difficult to get the hottest setting – and added to this is the fact that the gas is already very cold (as the bottle is kept outside, no mains gas here).

Despite a few minor obstacles we had a splendid (and white), though short Christmas... back at work today :-(