Kabul zoo

The Kabul zoo is on the way to the bombed out west, before the river dries out and becomes a sludge of vegetable rubbish and holms where men sit on plastic chairs by plastic tables underneath plastic umbrellas selling minutes on a telephone to loved ones. At the entrance by the road, foreigners pay 20 times what locals pay, but the real moment you enter is when you go through the façade of a building that has no back. You scrabble down the rubble and bent metal and en up in front of a black bear enclosure.

The bear takes three loping steps, sniffs the bars, then takes another three loping steps back and sniffs the stone wall. Over. And over. And over. The cage itself, while not adequate, would permit a mindless stroll about ten times as long. This bear's mind has gone. It hides behind comfort routines it picked up long ago. Perhaps three loping steps is how far away mother used to be.

Huddled as far away from the public as possible and breathing at the speed of rabbits, the jakals live in a perpetual state of fear. They dart back and forth, jostling for a space behind eachother, burying their heads in corners so they can pretend that the world is just black. That would be a comfort.

Playful monkeys fare better. They have society to structure their day. Their fur may be falling out, and their muscles atrophied through lack of stimulating activities, but they seem to just be monkeys in a closed space. A male turns around and stands on his groomers back legs while his pneumatic powered penis pounds him/her. Once satisfied he turns his back and allows the groomer to pick mites out of his back.

Young ones take turns chasing and being chased. Murky moat water designed to keep them from climbing out has become a playground. The younger they are the better they are at swimming. Some grapple underwater for ten seconds at a time, emerging with a green wig of stringy pondweed. Their colossal eyebrows fold over with the weight of water.

Vultures with wide wingspans scrabble along the floor. Those with hope left jump on and off of dead tree branches, reliving for the split second they stretch their wings the sensation of flight, the sensation of control over their own movements.

The predecessor to computer games: There is a box with a disc on it. The disc spins as the old man whose hands shake as he counts disintegrating notes turns a crank. On the disc are three toy cars of different sizes. Off the disc are two metal cars, racers. When a boy who has taken another note from his indulgent father pays, the old man takes a metal car and places it on a spot and begins turning the crank. The boy twists a steering wheel on the side of a box trying to keep his car out of the path of the cars coming in faster cycles at him. I imagine there is a magnet underneath the disc and the steering wheel moves it towards the edge or the center.