Afghan Fable 3 - Epiphany at a Bazaar

In the sweltering summer of 1983, I was wrapping up my first year in Afghanistan. Operations in Panjshir, Herat, and Kandahar were already behind me. By then, I considered myself an Afghan veteran—scarred but healing, my revolutionary Komsomol zeal still burning bright. The feudal country around me seemed to cry out for socialism. It awaited it. Craved it. Fought for it alongside us, selfless internationalists. On our side stood the most humane ideology of equality, free from the oppression of man by man. Against us were backward medieval traditions, American dollars, and Pakistan’s military regime.


Over that year, I saw things that jarred against my youthful worldview. Yet the resilience of a Soviet teenager-turned-soldier kept my ideological convictions steadfast. The grandeur of Moscow’s streets, with their towering Stalinist skyscrapers, stood in stark contrast to Kabul’s impoverished mud-brick quarters—a contrast that spoke loudly in favor of socialism. If Afghanistan stubbornly resisted progress and justice, ready to fight for a life in the Stone Age, I chalked it up to a lack of time and proper education to make its people see the obvious virtues of the Soviet system.


In a few months living in Kabul’s Microdistrict, we grew accustomed to the noisy, bountiful bazaars, brimming with a variety unfamiliar to the Soviet eye. Bananas, lemons, pineapples, and watermelons were available year-round. Only the erratic, season-driven prices caused occasional puzzlement, but I saw this instability as a mere side effect of the government’s insufficient economic control. Socialism’s gradual advance would surely fix this feudal flaw. For now, the bazaar beneath our apartment block delighted the eye with heaps of washed potatoes, sorted by size and quality, stacked in neat piles. The ubiquitous Soviet word “dostat’” (“to obtain”) nearly vanished from our vocabulary, perhaps lingering only when it came to the foul local liquor.


Two parallel realities coexisted in our minds. In one, there was the fairest, near-perfect Soviet system, where no one exploited or oppressed another. In the other was feudalism, where we effortlessly found the essentials of Soviet desire—jeans, shearling coats, modern audio equipment, leather jackets, Orient watches, and sneakers—without middlemen or struggle.


It’s hard to explain to today’s generation how we reconciled the drab Soviet shop counters with the vibrant Afghan bazaars, where everything was available. Harder still is describing the reality of late Soviet civilization, where the ability to embrace contradictions was called “ideological fortitude” and considered a citizen’s essential virtue.


One summer evening, returning to my Microdistrict apartment, I stopped at the nearby bazaar to buy a couple of kilos of potatoes for dinner. But at the familiar spot, where Afghan dukan vendors usually set up their stalls, something had changed. The lively tables of bananas and apples remained, but in place of the usual potato vendor was a massive heap of potatoes dumped on the ground. Nearby, a tall, brisk Afghan strutted with an air of authority, a money pouch at his waist. Scanning the scene, I spotted the old dukan vendor sitting by the roadside. I approached to ask what was going on.
“Here!” he nodded at the potato heap. “They replaced me with this ‘cooperative.’ They told me there’s no place for exploiters in the new Afghan bazaar. But I employ thirty workers from a nearby village to harvest and deliver potatoes. Now I’m an exploiter.”


The potatoes on the ground stood in sharp contrast to the bright, tidy piles of washed potatoes I’d grown used to over the year. The price was different too—three times cheaper than the dukan vendor’s. But so was the quality: unwashed, caked in dirt, unsorted by size or condition, just dumped in a messy pile.
At this “new” dukan, I realized I couldn’t pick my own potatoes. All I could choose was the weight—two kilos. A worker grabbed potatoes from the heap without care, tossing them into a plastic bag. They weighed my portion and handed it over. The grim vendor took my money and passed it to the brisk Afghan behind him, who tucked it into his waist pouch.


Something cracked in my mind. The cherished status of a valued customer, which I’d first experienced at Afghan bazaars, vanished with the faint breeze of socialism—the very socialism I’d been imposing on this country with all the fervor of a Soviet Komsomol zealot. I felt the chill of a Soviet shop, with its stern salespeople, lords of their domain, to whom I came as a bothersome supplicant. The usual pleasantries—chitchat about a grandfather’s health, a daughter’s school progress, or the harvest—felt out of place in this “new” dukan, where the only permitted act was a curt exchange of goods for cash.
For reasons I couldn’t yet grasp, this shift—from one reality to another, at this unremarkable Afghan bazaar—struck me like a bolt of lightning. Before me lay my socialist reality: a pile of dirty potatoes. Just steps away was the untouched feudal economy, with its gleaming bananas and dust-free watermelons. Clutching a bag of grimy potatoes, I couldn’t shake the shock of an epiphany that truly unnerved me:


“This is socialism in action!”

For the first time in my life, to my quiet horror, I realized that feudalism—at least at this bazaar—was more appealing. With its neat stacks of apples, cheerful vendors, fluctuating prices, and offers to share a cup of tea if time allowed. My entire Soviet childhood and brief Soviet youth, so harmoniously rooted in the belief that ours was the fairest system, worthy of spreading across the globe, crashed headlong into a wall. A mundane, primitive, bazaar-born comparison of two worlds, laid bare by this “cooperative” where no one oppressed or “stole added value.” Yet its master was a brisk Afghan Bolshevik with a money pouch, indifferent to my grandfather’s health, tasked with growing a set quota of potatoes, eyeing neighboring vendors as rivals to be eradicated. For as long as they stood nearby, his dirty pile of potatoes would lose to their vibrant pyramids of apples and bananas.

Like many my age, I’ve been profoundly lucky. Bullets missed me, piercing only the flask in my rucksack. I found the perfect wife, who gave me four children, and was raised by old-school parents who lived faithfully without betrayal or divorce. I had the fortune to study at a legendary military academy, and my career was a string of wise choices and sheer luck. I met friends from across the world who became lifelong companions. But one of my greatest strokes of luck was that moment at the Kabul bazaar, when a faint crack appeared in my communist worldview. It was barely noticeable, yet it never healed. Years later, communism ceased to be humanity’s bright future in my eyes. I didn’t become a dissident, didn’t march onto Red Square with banners, or flee to the West. I stayed true to my oath until the country I served collapsed under the weight of its flawed ideology. Perhaps I was lucky that my epiphany aligned with the fall of communism in my homeland.

With communism’s collapse, I didn’t lose my purpose, unlike some Soviet film protagonists. I found my place in the new world, discovering meaning beyond the futile fight for other nations’ happiness. I witnessed the catastrophe that communism’s fall brought to some at home—civil wars, alcoholism, suicides. But I also saw my country’s rebirth, how it flourished once it turned away from communism. The dukan vendor’s drive for profit was harnessed to serve humanity.
Few can pinpoint the exact moment they grasped something fundamental. I can. It’s one of those rare fortunes that lets me say: my life was worth living.