Three Different Views Of A Ride

Perspective is personal. How someone sees or feels is entirely individual. How it's described can be factual, dry, embellished and even missing key details. When presented with a story from a writer who crafts breathtaking prose, the reader rarely questions the content.

Last month Dexter Filkins, who is no amateur when it comes to the scratch of a pen, gave NY Times readers a glimpse of a road trip in Afghanistan. On Afghan Road: Scenes of Beauty and Death details a road trip both beautiful and dangerous.

"The mayhem unfolds on one of the most bewitching stretches of scenery on all the earth. The gorge, in some places no more than a few hundred yards wide, is framed by vertical rock cliffs that soar more than 2,000 feet above the Kabul River below. Most people die, and most cars crash, while zooming around one of the impossible turns that offer impossible views of the crevasses and buttes."

In Filkins' version, he survived the drive --only by chance. He writes of cars with bad brakes and bald tires, stacking up behind slow trucks. Inevitably, the drivers decide to pass, oftentimes crashing into oncoming traffic. I was caught up in the prose, the humor, the anecdotes the first time through. So I reread it several hours later. But this time I caught two superlatives:

"Most people die, and most cars crash"

Most? As in almost everyone who dares to take that drive? If most die, why do people return? Besides, what is most? With a statement so bold, I'm thinking eight out of ten. When I read further about the accidents he witnessed or about the number of victims taken to the hospital, I'm thinking nine out of ten. Filkins does a great job at describing the drama of this dangerous drive. There are doctors claiming they're going to open medical stations along the way, and bully Afghan drivers. I'm feeling a bit lost after the reread, but can't figure out why.

Leave it to resident Jalalabad blogger, Tim Lynch of Free Range International, to correct Filkins' version. He takes Filkins to task for grabbing onto trivial things and inflating them into news.

"I have driven that road maybe 500 times in the last five years. I drove it before it was even paved and feel I am in the position to correct some of the crap phoned in from by our celebrity reporter… ready? Well hold on a second, you have to read the article linked above so my hasty critique makes sense. OK. Ready?

Worse, it seems Filkins made geographical and historical errors. Lynch corrects them:

1. The “Kabul Gorge” is west of Sarobi, centered on the Mahpar Pass; what you labeled as the gorge is in reality the Tangi valley. Tangi is Dari for “dam” and every valley downstream of a dam is called the “Tangi Valley” which is why there are about 30 of them around the country.
2. When the British Army withdrew from Kabul in 1842 they went through the Latabad Pass, which is about 7 miles west of the Mahipar Pass. The current Jbad to Kabul road did not exist back in the 1800’s."

And a factual error as well:

• "It is impossible for vehicles to reach high rates of speed required to “sail through the air” when driving through the town of Sarobi. It is too crowded, with too many turns, and the ANP would not tolerate that kind of recklessness anyway. I have seen plenty of bad accidents on the Jbad to Kabul road, but never seen or heard of one inside the village limits of Sarobi.

Do you see how easy it is to recognize BS when you are not confined to FOB’s or luxury hotels Dexter?"

If the geography is wrong, then it doesn't even pass muster as a reliable travel story.

Then Amy sends me her own video, uploaded to YouTube some time ago. Watch passing through Surobi.

Amy points out how "normal" it is in a sense, not the four-wheeling sailing through the sky, account given in the NY Times. Even she, a female driver, has made that drive. As for the "bully Aghans," Filkins describes as drivers, Amy says they do drive "crazy," but no more so than in Haiti, India or Pakistan. If there were no such thing as insurance premiums, and if there were livestock on the road, other more "civilized" nations might drive like this too.

Like Tim, she admits that when it's rainy or icy there are very bad accidents. But, unlike the impression that writers like Filkins has given, most days are boringly normal.

Anyway, Filkins took us on a wild ride, but two others had differing views. I think Filkins is a really good writer, and I hope he gets to the hard news --unembellished, historically and geographically correct, soon.