Blue sky thinking

The news from Kabul was bad. Heavy rain and clouds were shrouding the city. All incoming domestic flights had been cancelled.

Marooned in Herat with deadlines pressing we knew any attempt to drive to the capital from the west of Afghanistan would be suicidal. That's the only road you could use through the province of Helmand.

The scene that greeted us at the airport  twenty four hours later was not for the faint-hearted. Eid was approaching and every passenger was bearing sack loads of gifts. Pumpkin seeds, pomegranates, almonds and pistachios.It was like a giant souk.

Hundreds of people were crowded onto a field about the size of a football pitch snaking in three impatient lines towards a small hut guarded by a policeman with an unsheathed truncheon.

Everyone had a ticket but nobody had a boarding pass. Seven painful hours later we secured ours…tiny slivers of shiny paper more precious than gold-leaf on that day with night already drawing in. But no seat numbers were written on them.

Time to gird the loins. Getting on board any plane was  still going to be a fight only the fittest would win. Nobody knew what money had changed hands. Would the number of boarding passes issued equal the number of seats on the plane?