The Taliban Shuffle Quotes

“Back then, I had no idea what would actually happen. That Pakistan and Afghanistan would ultimately become more all consuming than any relationship I had ever had. That they would slowly fall apart, and that even as they crumbled, chunk by chunk, they would feel more like home than anywhere else. I had no idea that I would find self-awareness in a combat zone, a kind of peace in chaos. My life here wouldn't be about a man or God or some cause. I would fall in love, deeply, but with a story, with a way of life. When everything else was stripped away, my life would be about an addiction, not to drugs, but to a place. I would never feel as alive as when I was here.”
― Kim Barker, The Taliban Shuffle: Strange Days in Afghanistan and Pakistan

“It wasn't necessarily the booze and brothels. It was the growing gap in the country between the haves and have-nots, the corruption, the warlords now in parliament, the drug lords doubling as government officials, the general attitude of the foreigners from aid workers to the international troops, and the fact that no one ever seemed to be held accountable for anything.”
― Kim Barker, The Taliban Shuffle: Strange Days in Afghanistan and Pakistan

“But at the time, a mark of how far down the rabbit hole I had fallen, I saw it as just another tragedy I needed to stuff in the growing box in the back of my head. Shut the top and move on.”
― Kim barker, The Taliban Shuffle: Strange Days in Afghanistan and Pakistan

“Only in this madness was it possible to feel such purpose.”
― Kim Barker, The Taliban Shuffle: Strange Days in Afghanistan and Pakistan

“I could see the stories that stretched for years into the future, much like the ones that stretched back years into the past. More bombs, more sudden death, more adrenaline. Never had I felt as alive as in Pakistan and Afghanistan, so close to chaos, so constantly reminded of how precious, temporary, and fragile life was. I had certainly grown here. I knew how to find money in a war zone, how to flatter a warlord, how to cover a suicide bombing, how to jump-start a car using a cord and a metal ladder, how to do the Taliban shuffle between conflict zones. I knew how to be alone. I knew I did not need a man, unless that man was my fixer. But also, I knew I had turned into this almost drowning caricature of a war hack, working, swearing, and drinking my way through life and relationships.”
― Kim Barker, The Taliban Shuffle: Strange Days in Afghanistan and Pakistan

“The Afghans and their international guards made a show of clearing a patch of poppies right outside the base gate--a patch they had been saving to show off for the media and top Kabul luminaries, a patch with limited risk of attack. A man from the U.S. embassy, thrilled to be outside, wore a patch on his flak vest: AMERICA, FUCK YEAH, it said, quoting the movie Team America. Was there a better description for what we were trying to do here? If so, I had yet to hear it.”
― Kim Barker , The Taliban Shuffle: Strange Days in Afghanistan and Pakistan

“As the crisis in the country deepened, the Westerners would segregate themselves and retreat into their compounds, building a separate world in Kabul, free of the hassles of Afghanistan, free of Afghans.”
― Kim Barker, The Taliban Shuffle: Strange Days in Afghanistan and Pakistan

“Regardless, I told my boss it was no longer a good idea for me to see Sharif. He was married, older, rich, and powerful. As a pleasant-looking, pedigree-lacking American with hair issues, I was an extremely unlikely paramour. But Sharif had ended our visit with a dangling proposition--the mysterious identity of a second potential friend. I decided to stick to a tapped-phone relationship.”
― Kim Barker, The Taliban Shuffle: Strange Days in Afghanistan and Pakistan

“Is something wrong?" shouted one of the lawyers inside.

"Yeah, something's wrong. These guys keep grabbing me."

He sighed and whispered something to lawyers outside the Pajero. Half a dozen then walked over to me, surrounding my rear flank, trying to protect it. But they were as effective as the country's legal system. The hands kept poking holes in their defenses. I kept spinning around, screaming, gesturing like I was conducting an orchestra on speed, randomly catching hands mid-pinch and then hitting the offenders.

I was creating a scene. This time, the door of the Pajero popped open.

"Kim. Get in," the lawyer said.

This was unexpected. Every journalist I knew had been trying to get inside this vehicle for months. None had. But somehow, where skills, talent, and perseverance had failed, my unremarkable ass had delivered.”
― Kim Barker, The Taliban Shuffle: Strange Days in Afghanistan and Pakistan

“Still, almost seven years since this notion of democracy was thrust into Afghanistan, many Afghans, especially the young ones, saw it as a veneer for "anything goes," for sex, drugs, and booze, and music about sex, drugs, and booze. Freedom was just another word for losing yourself in excess. I tried to do stories on this culture clash whenever I could, seeing it as a way to write about how Afghans lived, not just how they died.”
― Kim Barker, The Taliban Shuffle: Strange Days in Afghanistan and Pakistan

“Some foreigners wanted to make Afghanistan a better place, viewed Afghanistan as a home rather than a party, and even genuinely liked Afghans. But they were in the minority, and many had left, driven out by the corruption and the inability to accomplish anything. For most, Afghanistan was Kabul High, a way to get your war on, an adrenaline rush, a résumé line, a money factory. It was a place to escape, to run away from marriages and mistakes, a place to forget your age, your responsibilities, your past, a country in which to reinvent yourself. Not that there was anything wrong with that, but the motives of most people were not likely to help a fragile and corrupt country stuck somewhere between the seventh century and Vegas.”
― Kim Barker, The Taliban Shuffle: Strange Days in Afghanistan and Pakistan

“On the way out of the stadium, a car of Afghans passed us. “Dog washers!” one yelled. That was a favorite epithet for foreigners because, well, a true Afghan would never keep a dog as a pet let alone wash one. Most Afghans, like many conservative Muslims, were suspicious of dogs, believing that angels would not visit a house when dogs were inside.”
― Kim Barker, The Taliban Shuffle: Strange Days in Afghanistan and Pakistan

“Afghanistan seemed familiar. It had jagged blue-and-purple mountains, big skies, and bearded men in pickup trucks stocked with guns and hate for the government. It was like Montana—just on different drugs. So”
― Kim Barker, The Taliban Shuffle: Strange Days in Afghanistan and Pakistan

“The contradictions created by sixty years of obfuscation in Pakistan played out on a daily basis, in the continual whiplash between secularism and extremism, the contorted attempts to hold this fracturing nation together with Scotch tape and honeyed tongues.”
― Kim Barker, The Taliban Shuffle: Strange Days in Afghanistan and Pakistan

“After four days, during which I bathed with gritty wet wipes and figured out the long odds, I got out of Camp Hell. I had seen no real government and little aid that mattered. The United States had set up a tiny base in the middle of Taliban territory and started firing off howitzers every night, a move that probably terrified any Afghans who might have wanted them around. The base wasn't protecting anyone or able to win any hearts or minds. Instead, it stirred up a hornet's nest, with no conceivable way to calm it down, no real alternatives to poppies, no government authority. The United States did not bear all the blame. The lack of resources and troops here was the product of years of outrageous neglect by the entire international coalition.”
― Kim Barker, The Taliban Shuffle: Strange Days in Afghanistan and Pakistan

“At some point, I realized the horrible truth--the United States and its allies could win every single battle in Afghanistan and blow up every single alleged top militant in Pakistan, but still lose this war.”
― Kim Barker, The Taliban Shuffle: Strange Days in Afghanistan and Pakistan

“Sabit was his own worst enemy. He had earlier given a TV interview where he had called one of the top religious men in the country a 'donkey pussy,' a common epithet in Afghanistan. Tolo started playing the clip of Sabit saying 'donkey pussy' incessantly - inserting it into the satirical TV show Danger Bell.”
― Kim Barker, The Taliban Shuffle: Strange Days in Afghanistan and Pakistan

“Soon someone pinched me. But this time I managed to grab the offending hand. I spun around. The man, who stood about five feet tall and appeared close to fifty, waved his one free hand in front of him, looked up, and pleaded, “No, no, no.” I punched him in the face. “Don’t you have sisters, mothers?” I said, looking at the other men. Sometimes that argument actually worked.”
― Kim Barker, The Taliban Shuffle: Strange Days in Afghanistan and Pakistan

“The main mistake made by the Americans is this—an American general comes here for six months. Then he’s replaced,” Khakrizwal said. “For four years, I was the head of intelligence in Kandahar. For six months, I’d work on an American—explaining who are friends, who are enemies—then that person was replaced by another American. Finally, my patience was over. I was tired of giving them advice.”
― Kim Barker, The Taliban Shuffle: Strange Days in Afghanistan and Pakistan

“The practice was known as bacha bazi, or “boy play.” A Pashto proverb maintained that women were for breeding, boys for pleasure, but melons for sheer delight.”
― Kim Barker, The Taliban Shuffle: Strange Days in Afghanistan and Pakistan

“At one point, I was inside one safe house. I heard BBC on a radio outside, and they were doing a story on Taliban training camps in Pakistan, and Pakistani officials were denying any training camps, but I couldn't hear the story that well because of all the gunfire from the Taliban training camp outside my door.”
― Kim Barker, The Taliban Shuffle: Strange Days in Afghanistan and Pakistan

“Hear me out.” He held his hand toward me to silence my negations as he made his pitch. He could have said anything—that he was a purported billionaire who had built my favorite road in Pakistan, that he could buy me a power plant or build me a nuclear weapon. But he opted for honesty. “I know, I’m not as tall as you’d like,” Sharif explained. “I’m not as fit as you’d like. I’m fat, and I’m old. But I would still like to be your friend.” “No,” I said. “No way.” He then offered me a job running his hospital, a job I was eminently unqualified to perform. “It’s a huge hospital,” he said. “You’d be very good at it.” He said he would only become prime minister again if I were his secretary. I”
― Kim Barker, The Taliban Shuffle: Strange Days in Afghanistan and Pakistan

“He then offered to meet me the next day, at a friend’s apartment in Lahore, to give me the iPhone and have tea. No, I said. I was going to Faridkot. Sharif finally came to the point. “Kim. I am sorry I was not able to find you a friend. I tried, but I failed.” He shook his head, looked genuinely sad about the failure of the project. “That’s OK,” I said. “Really. I don’t really want a friend right now. I am perfectly happy without a friend. I want to be friendless.” He paused. And then, finally, the tiger of Punjab pounced. “I would like to be your friend.” I didn’t even let him get the words out. “No. Absolutely not. Not going to happen.”
― Kim Barker, The Taliban Shuffle: Strange Days in Afghanistan and Pakistan

“He looked out the window. It seemed to me that he was thinking of Bhutto’s widower, Zardari, his onetime ally and now rival, a man universally considered cunning at business who many felt had outsmarted Sharif in their recent political tango. “No. Who wants cunning?” “Anything else?” he asked. “What about his appearance?” “I don’t really care. Not fat. Athletic.” We shook hands, and I left. In all my strange interviews with Sharif, that definitely was the strangest. Pakistan’s spies soon seemed to kick up their interest in me, maybe because I had written a few controversial stories, maybe because of Sharif. Sitting in my living room, I complained to several friends about a man named Qazi, a former army colonel who worked as part of intelligence over foreigners.”
― Kim Barker, The Taliban Shuffle: Strange Days in Afghanistan and Pakistan

“I had a boyfriend. We recently broke up.” I nodded my head stupidly, as if to punctuate this thought. “Why?” Sharif asked. “Was he too boring for you? Not fun enough?” “Um. No. It just didn’t work out.” “Oh. I cannot believe you do not have a friend,” Sharif countered. “No. Nope. I don’t. I did.” “Do you want me to find one for you?” Sharif asked. To recap: The militants were gaining strength along the border with Afghanistan and staging increasingly bold attacks in the country’s cities. The famed Khyber Pass, linking Pakistan and Afghanistan, was now too dangerous to drive. The country appeared as unmoored and directionless as a headless chicken. And here was Sharif, offering to find me a friend. Thank God the leaders of Pakistan had their priorities straight. “Sure. Why not?” I said. The”
― Kim Barker, The Taliban Shuffle: Strange Days in Afghanistan and Pakistan

“We talked about Zardari, but he spoke carefully and said little of interest, constantly glancing at my tape recorder like it was radioactive. Eventually, he nodded toward it. “Can you turn that off?” he asked. “Sure,” I said, figuring he wanted to tell me something off the record. “So. Do you have a friend, Kim?” Sharif asked. I was unsure what he meant. “I have a lot of friends,” I replied. “No. Do you have a friend?” I figured it out. “You mean a boyfriend?” “Yes.” I looked at Sharif. I had two options—lie, or tell the truth. And because I wanted to see where this line of questioning was going, I told the truth.”
― Kim Barker, The Taliban Shuffle: Strange Days in Afghanistan and Pakistan

“The crush of men waved their arms in the air and shouted that they loved Sharif. He spoke into a microphone, but it was broken and no one could hear anything he said. Speech over, Sharif climbed down from the counter and slipped into a bulletproof black Mercedes, courtesy of his good friend, King Abdullah, who had also shipped Sharif back to Pakistan in a Saudi royal plane. Now,”
― Kim Barker, The Taliban Shuffle: Strange Days in Afghanistan and Pakistan

“During his second term, Sharif built my favorite road in Pakistan, a hundred and seventy miles of paved, multilaned bliss connecting Lahore to Islamabad; named Musharraf as chief of the army; and successfully tested the country’s first nuclear weapon.”
― Kim Barker, The Taliban Shuffle: Strange Days in Afghanistan and Pakistan

“The insurgents here were also smart, winning popularity points with reports of Islamic courts in rural districts that delivered swift justice. These judges contrasted vividly with government judges, who often demanded bribes or took forever to decide a case.”
― Kim Barker, The Taliban Shuffle: Strange Days in Afghanistan and Pakistan

“Checking myself out in my hotel-room mirror, I decided to wear the long black abaya inside Kandahar, and the burqa when we traveled in the car outside the city. At least the hotel room was nicer than my first time in Kandahar. The TV had about two hundred channels, most of them porn. I checked the room computer’s Internet history—more porn. That was a good sign, I supposed. Despite the Taliban comeback, Kandahar was still hung up on sex.”
― Kim Barker, The Taliban Shuffle: Strange Days in Afghanistan and Pakistan