One year, 1971, I decided to fly around the world. I had never been to Japan, which was my first stop and a life changing event. I have returned to Japan every year since then usually for 6 weeks to two months. I flew on to Seoul, Bangkok, Kathmandu, Kabul and Tehran.
In Kabul I met up with my father and stepmother. I spent a week with them living in their travelling home, a sort of camper. I remember Kabul vividly. All dirt streets with only a few two story mud brick buildings in the center of town. It was electrified. I got to see a man use an oxy-acetylene torch to work on cars. The oxygen was from a high pressure tank, but the acetylene was from charcoal shaped material burning under a hood, fanned by an apprentice.
The last King of Afghanistan, Zahir Khan had left a year or two earlier. He was officially deposed in a coup a couple of years later.
One day my father decided to drive into the nearby mountains to visit and swim at the American Embassy resort. It got dark and we couldn’t find the right road. The road we were on ended at a large one story mansion with a lovely garden and empty pool. The mansion was entirely empty. It never had had windows, unnecessary in that climate. We parked the van and stayed the night.
The next morning while we were nearby washing up and shaving (ablutions) a man dressed in an Arab robe with a suit jacket came yelling at us with an 1890’s Enfield rifle pointed our direction. We put up our hands. All three of us.
My father reached for a Pashto dictionary. The man with the gun didn’t understand Pashto. My father tried the Urdu dictionary. Still didn’t work. There are a dozen secondary languages in Afghanistan. Then the Farsi (Persian) dictionary. He understood a little of that.
My stepmother went into the camper and brought out four cups of hot tea. The man put the rifle down and we all sat down. It turns out, the mansion was the King’s. He was the guard. He liked the tea. Told us we had to leave, which we did, having walked the whole area the evening before.
That is the story.