Andrei.Hicks wrote on Dec 20^th, 2013 at 12:37pm:



Bit wanky for my liking, but you are right it was the best stallone ever did. 

DANCING BOYS HALF PRICE*.

Sylvester Stallone, Tom Cruise, Shahrukh Khan. Come today!

You will not be sad, friends. This one looks like Al Pacino.

Bacha Bazi With The Stars. 10346 Karl Marx Avenue, Kabul.

*Limited time only.

You are talking to me? There is no one else here, isn't it.

You wanna a piece of me?

Special price for you. 100 Afghani.

Midnight, the Presidential palace in Kabul. Karzai looks out over the city skyline, the crescent moon lighting the Mogul palace ramparts. The Angel of Darkness is silent.

"A thief, Mother, is this how I am to be treated? A thief in my own land? Kabesh!"

Karzai takes a toke of his pipe. He splutters and coughs.

When he finishes coughing, his half-lidded eyes pass over the neon lights of Kabul's red light district. SEVEN VEILS. HUBBLY BUBBLY. BACHA BAZI.

The last one is cheeky, as Bacha Bazi is officially banned. Of course there are no girls in any of those clubs. You'd be lucky to get a glass of bathtub gin. Sweet tea, hashish and dancing boys are all you'll find on a night out in Kabul - until the Taliban return to power. Then the owners will be blackmailed, the lights smashed with sticks, and goats will graze on the city streets again.

BACHA BAZI. Karzai thinks back to his youthful days during the Soviet occupation. Back then the boys sold drugs and prostituted themselves on the streets. Now the warlords were back in charge of business, the boys would be lucky to get a small cut. The big attractions might make 25%. All the rest: tea, goat curry and enough heroin to get by - until they inevitably lost their looks and stopped earning.

Then it was back on the Kabul streets and a short life of crime. The warlords, of course, controlled crime too, so an ex-Bacha Bazi boy with a twenty dollar day habit could not last long without their say so.

Karzai knows little of this, but he has his favourite: a 16 year old dancing boy with a face like a young Amitabh Bachan, Karzai's favourite Bollywood star. Allah Uakbar, he is a beauty, Karzai would say to his advisers. He can dance like a kite!

But Farhad, as he is known, is getting older, and Karzai is losing interest in the game. The club owners who made a fortune from Karzai, have tired of Farhad, who's incessant demands were becoming unbearable. Pirated Persian CDs, Kashmiri veils, Indian sweets, even pantihose. The more Karzai ignores his old club on Karl Marx Avenue, the less Farhad is tolerated. For the first time ever, he had his pay docked for not smiling sweetly enough while dancing for a Kazakh warlord.

Tonight, Karzai will stay at home. Kabesh, he has no approval and the guards will not let him leave. Can you believe? Karzai is the president and he needs permission to leave his own palace.

Outside, dogs bark on the street and the neon lights of Karl Marx Avenue burn in the distance. A thief - this is how Karzai is treated, no better than a prisoner. Tonight, if you are in Kabul, and you see a light on in the top floor of the Presidential Palace, the Mind of Afghanistan, you may look for Karzai.

Yes friends, he will be smoking his pipe and cursing to the Angel of Darkness in his own mother tongue.

It is a tongue that has moved leaders around the world, but it cannot get him out of his own golden cage. One day, Gud willing, all will be freed, but for now, sleep well.

It is true, effendes. Awake or asleep, Kabul still has the power to dream.

Dirty Paki Khunt wrote on Dec 21^st, 2013 at 9:39am:


Our man in Havana...oops..Kabul 

Now now, as Mr Abbott says, Oruzgan today is a significantly different and better place today than it was a decade ago.

Yes, friends, thank heavens the warlords are back in charge.