278. Tea Shop Warning

Kandahar, Afghanistan: I purposely ditch the French travelers in this town. Traveling with the swordsman is too dangerous. Sooner or later he is going to provoke someone into a fight and if I am around I will have to fight on HIS side. I feel sorry for Isabelle, but she chooses to travel with hazardous companions. I pretend to take a hotel room near theirs as usual, then leave by a back door and find another place to stay.


Alone again, I enjoy turning the sketches of fiend’s tooth mountains I made on the bus into color pictures. In the afternoon I walk into the countryside far away from the town. There are some peculiar rows of brick kilns as tall as a two story building in the fields that I photograph. Some kids holler at me and shake their fists. I am probably trespassing or something but don’t think anything of it.


I continue walking through the fields until I reach a dirt country road. There is a shabby teashop and I stop for a cuppa.


The host is crouching on a raised platform behind a pit of glowing charcoal. A circle of little metal teapots surrounds a smoldering charcoal fire. He moves a pot onto the coals for me and fans the arrangement into a snapping heat.


I am sipping my tea when four small men crowd into the room. From their diminutive size I think they are children at first, but when I carefully observe their faces, I see signs of aging. I guess their age at about 18 to 22.


I think we are having a friendly sign-language chat when I feel the slight tap of a bare foot on my crotch. An accident? The closest boy-man (and until this tap I thought they were kids) whose foot touched me only smiles, but there is something wrong with his smile. I think maybe he is just some country boy that wants to get close to an interesting tourist. But when I rise to go, the second man blocks my way with his legs. I playfully put my hand on his shoulder to move him out of my way and am startled by his strength and resistance. He shoves me back with a broad grin. I step around him and out of the teashop into the lane heading back through the brickworks toward town.


Suddenly a tiny child runs out in front of me with terror on her face. She makes the universal danger sign, the “cut your throat” gesture with finger across the neck, points back toward the teashop and races back between some buildings. That is a very serious warning for me!


I walk as fast as I can and stay in the middle of the road.


I don’t know why these men would want to hurt me. Of course, they are very poor. I am sure some of them would kill me for my shabby clothes and boots, not to mention my camera, which probably represents more in cash value than any of them will earn in a year or two of hard work.


I have been carrying my camera in a beat-up old cloth bag so it won’t look tempting to thieves, but hell, they know I have something in there—even the old bag would probably be a treasure worth my life out here!


I don’t see anyone following though and I return to my small hotel room without incident.

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