September 8 Suicide Car Bomber

all photos by Jamie Scott-Long

There is a man in a red shirt that reads "the world is going to hell. I'm driving the bus". He is standing just inside the cordon that separates the public from the debris of a suicide car bomb attack on an American Humvee. Its turret was blasted across the central divide, over the oncoming traffic lane, and into a ditch on the other side of the road.

The twisted remains of the armoured vehicle are being loaded onto a truck to be taken away and analysed. There is a crater six feet across where the suicide bomber's last thought of hatred triggered an explosion that would take his own life and with it those of 2 soldiers and at least 5 civilians.



It was the day of rest in Kabul. People were out walking around, standing at a fresh fruit juice stall just meters from the hole in the road. Waris tells me he bought cigarettes from a man who stood where now there is a rusted red puddle where the blood of civilians, soldiers and the bomber mix slowly in the heat with fresh fruit juice and water used to put out the fires.

Many of those injured were municipal workers cleaning the area around the Ahmed Shah Masood roundabout. A metal rubbish bin, one of many that have been littered around Kabul in the hope of creating a culture of orderly rubbish disposal, is bent in half.



Death does not make the factional discriminations made in life. At one end of the cordoned area muslim caps lie side by side with floppy camouflage hats. In the burnt trees hang a grey Army t shirt, and shreds of Sharwal Chamise.




Once the security forces and investigation teams have left, the remains of lives struggling to establish normality while cramped in a hot heavy vehicle are strewn across the road. A copy of Sports Illustrated is folded in half. Perhaps it once fit in a pocket. The celebrity gossip magazine STAR is partly charred. One headline : "Why Tom won't marry Katie". Another: "Nicole Dying to be thin". That is such old gossip.



Little plastic tubs of Apple sauce with cinnamon still have their seal-fresh foil tops on them. The little worms from a cup o noodle are shattered into tiny, dismembered curls. The top of a Pringles tube is burnt and its crushed contents are spilling out. Nearby, chemical orange cheese seeps like molten plastic out of dip tubs. The soldiers were eating starbursts. And 5 flavours of lifesavers.

Then there are signs that they are not at home. A charred packet the size of a Kleenex box is a sealed meal package. It is number 19: beef with roast vegetables.

Afghan Army scavengers collect coloured pencils. I left my pen in the car that brought me here. By my foot There is a pack of pens fused to each other. I pick them up and separate one. I take notes with a pen that belongs to a dead man. I write from notes written with the pen of a dead man. You are reading words which first spilled from a dead mans pen.








The worst bit is how quickly I adapt. When I first overhear mention of the incident I am scared to think it happened in the city I am in, at a place I was trying to get to for the time the bomb went off. By the time we get there, despite watching every car around us, I am ready for the next dose. I pause a second at the first checkpoint then pull out my ID and talk to a French soldier, he waves us past. At the next police line I see the debris and hang back from the line looking away, playing aloof. Then I am testing the boundaries, seeing if I can inch closer without the private security team noticing. When the line comes down as the soldiers move out, I march down the road towards the wreckage. I look around, at times look away. I talk to people and notice my pen is missing. I see a soldier picking up coloured pencils. How can he. Then I regret that they aren't sharpened. Then I see the pens. I take one and write. Then I use the pen to turn burnt uniforms over, looking for name tags. They are all velcroed on so have been removed.



Then we go to the hospital to see the wounded.