An email to my editor
Tuesday, October 23, 2007
hey Anne
I got back to Kabul a couple of days ago and there was a receipt on my desk for a package. I went down to the 'post office'..... (If you could call it that), I had no idea what was in the package.
I went through several different people, signing paperwork and slipping small bribes to them. This is normal in Afghanistan, (0.30 cents goes a long way in this country). Then the package was brought out to me and I read on the package: From Swindle. Everyone had a smile on their faces.......
The man in charge, said I had to follow this old hunchback Afghan man up stairs. So I did and he took me to the "Parcel Review Office" (A new name for Vice and Vritue). There was a burly man siting behind a desk, I handed him some paper work along with one copy of your mag.
He spent a good 10 mintues flicking through the mag, stopped on the Jamica whore house story (eyebrows raised) and then kept flicking. Finally he closed the mag, took out a form, filled it in, gave it his signature and slammed a big purple stamp on it and handed back to me.
Swindle has been cleared by the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan as a acceptable material!
Thank you for the extra copies, I will pass them on to the drug rehabs involved, the journo who wrote the article and keep a copy for my students here so they can see what a real US mag looks like.
keep in touch
Travis
I got back to Kabul a couple of days ago and there was a receipt on my desk for a package. I went down to the 'post office'..... (If you could call it that), I had no idea what was in the package.
I went through several different people, signing paperwork and slipping small bribes to them. This is normal in Afghanistan, (0.30 cents goes a long way in this country). Then the package was brought out to me and I read on the package: From Swindle. Everyone had a smile on their faces.......
The man in charge, said I had to follow this old hunchback Afghan man up stairs. So I did and he took me to the "Parcel Review Office" (A new name for Vice and Vritue). There was a burly man siting behind a desk, I handed him some paper work along with one copy of your mag.
He spent a good 10 mintues flicking through the mag, stopped on the Jamica whore house story (eyebrows raised) and then kept flicking. Finally he closed the mag, took out a form, filled it in, gave it his signature and slammed a big purple stamp on it and handed back to me.
Swindle has been cleared by the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan as a acceptable material!
Thank you for the extra copies, I will pass them on to the drug rehabs involved, the journo who wrote the article and keep a copy for my students here so they can see what a real US mag looks like.
keep in touch
Travis
