When Finest, a Western supermarket, was hit by a suicide bomber yesterday, I received nine phone calls in the space of about 10 minutes from friends here checking to make sure that I had not, as could so easily have been the case, stopped to pick up some groceries on my way home from the gym.
The calls and emails continued through the day as we learned that it was not a gas canister exploding, but an attack. Someone wrote, “I hope no one you know was affected”.
Yet, the target of the attack -- a supermarket most of us use in the diplomatic part of the city -- meant we were all affected. I had been in that shop three times over the past week; to use the ATM, on the hunt for tonic water and with my first overseas guest, both of us with stinking hangovers looking for something to rehydrate with.
That day, I had been to the gym and had lunch with a friend at the Serena hotel, itself the target of an attack three years ago. We spent a couple hours chatting, drinking coffee and then she paid the bill. As we called our respective cars, I thought about stopping by Finest to pick up some groceries, but I was coming down with a cold, and decided to skip it.
My friend, perhaps having exhausted her money by buying lunch, decided to use the ATM at Finest. The line was long, and so she went up stairs, an odd choice for a browse as there is little up there bar pet products and cleaning items. That’s when the bomber struck. Shooting first and then throwing a hand grenade before blowing himself up. My friend is fine, shaken, but unhurt, luckily because she was upstairs. Several other people, including at least three foreign women, were killed. A dozen or so more were injured.
The phone calls all started, “just checking to make sure you are ok”, and “have you reached so and so?”, but the single most repeated refrain after that was: “I can’t believe it took them so long”. And indeed, it’s true. The Western grocery stores, and there are three main ones in Kabul; the two branches of Finest and a Spinney’s (no connection, I believe, to the one in the UAE) are a fundamentalist’s wet dream. Not only are they full of foreigners; aid workers, UN and NATO staff, journalists and diplomats, their logo emblazoned SUV’s blurting out their presence, but their shelves are packed with products imported from the West; pepperoni pizza, pork sausages, caviar, Bollywood films and even muscle and sex enhancement aids.
Finest was one of those places that seemed to be a cultural free for all. Wealthy Afghans in shiny suits or shawar kameez stocked up on junk food, toys or household appliances; their wives, their headscarves slipping dangerously down the backs of their head and teetering on impossibly high heels watching on anxiously. I too always lost the headscarf the minute I walked inside.
Chinese and Filipino women often came in wearing skin tight jeans and thigh-length boots. Outside, beefy looking body guards wearing sunglasses jostled with kids trying to sell gum, and there was always a woman in a burqa, one hand cradling a baby, the other outstretched until you got in your car.
The guys at the cashiers were professionals. They had only within the last few months installed a scanner at the checkout. You could pay in dollars or afghanis and someone would carry your groceries to your car for you. The selection seldom varied. Occasionally they would run out of ryvita, or skimmed milk or tonic water, and so you would hustle up to the other Finest or Spinney’s to see what they had.
Security was ridiculously lax. A couple of Afghan guards sitting around on plastic chairs, their AK-47s perched on their laps as they leered at the women entering the store.
One security guard quoted by the BBC yesterday summed up their attitude towards their job:
"I was standing here when I suddenly heard a bang. After a few moments, I heard another bang. I didn't go inside to find out what's happened."
The attack on Finest doesn’t feel like an act of war, but more a personal attack on a group of people who are trying to help this country stand on its own two feet.
While the Taliban have claimed they were targeting the head of the security contractor Xe Services, formerly known as Blackwater, it was in fact a personal attack on the international community. The last time this happened was in February of last year, when they attacked an Indian guesthouse.
Today, on the way home from getting a pedicure (life must go on you know) my taxi driver and I drove past Finest. The doors were boarded and gated and there were a few police rangers outside. But otherwise there was little to tell of the horror that had taken place there that day. It still isn’t clear how many people died, some say eight others nine. A child was among them ... probably one of the chewing gum sellers. Perhaps the boy that my friend that day last week gave her can of soda to as he asked her for money.
The attack will certainly scare some people off. Another friend lamented: "We can't even go shopping anymore". But it seems to have the opposite effect on me. I needed to get some money, but I also needed to prove to myself that I wasn’t afraid and so I had the driver stop by the new Finest ... a second branch of the supermarket just around the corner from my house.
There were no UN or NGO cars parked outside, and surprisingly (although this may show me up to be naive) not a shred of extra security. Inside it was quiet, there were no foreigners shopping and only a handful of Afghans. Did they hate me I wondered, for threatening their safety, but yet the business had been making money on people like me for a few years.
It was a stark reminder of the relationship between the international community and Afghans here. They don’t like us being here, but neither do they want us to leave.
I got my money, my vegan soup and cans of hummus and went home.
