Glen's Rambling

We had spent three of the last four days crammed in the back of various four-wheel-drives, bouncing over roads and tracks of ever-decreasing quality. So when we pulled up at the mud-walled guesthouse in the sunlight of late afternoon, we were looking to stretch our legs. Richard, the proper English gentleman of our group, had decided that what was needed was cricket, and had purchased a cheap bat and ball set when we were still back in civilisation.

After a greeting of handshakes and smiles with the proprietor and his family, the seven of us dumped our bags in our furniture-less room, procured a rickety wooden chair from somewhere to use as stumps, paced out a pitch in the dirt, and played cricket in Afghanistan.

No doubt our arrival in the tiny village of Gaz Khan had been noted by discreet eyes peeping around corners and through empty window frames - western tourists are not a common sight here, high in the Afghan Pamir mountains. But things had all been quiet until about the third over. Then curious children started to slowly appear from doorways and between the slender birch trees. Still very much uncertain about us, they edged nervously forward. First the boys, naturally bolder, then the girls in their distinctive brightly ornamented orange and red costumes, always in tight groups of three or four. And then the adults and village elders, just as curious as the young.

It took very little to get them to join in. The boys would run halfway down the pitch to hurl the ball at the chair, grimacing with effort. The men wielded the bat like a paddle, swatting at the ball one-handed. And the girls, after some gentle coaxing, proved to be a useful fielding unit, running after the ball en masse and returning it, in a fit of giggles, in the general direction required. Even the staid village headman, with his dignified silver beard and spotless white shalwar kameez, whooped with joy at a particularly well struck shot high over square leg.

The name Afghanistan brings to mind endlessly terrible things - violence, conflict, anger and ugliness. But it is a country of normal people, just like any other - of farmers and shopkeepers and children. For a moment on that late afternoon, as the fading sun sent long shadows slowly up our magnificent mountain grandstand, and the only shared word we had was "Howzat!" we knew that children are the same everywhere. They love to play. And so, it turned out, do the adults.