report from Kandahar

Apparently finished with the traces of Bormann in South America, the unfrightenable Graeme Wood (one of the few people I know who makes my own life feel utterly boring) is now in Kandahar with Canadian forces:

“It is extremely difficult to convey this persistence of commerce and everyday life without sounding naive, like the visitors to 2003 Baghdad who pronounced the city recovery-bound because shops were open and selling name-brand sodas. Kandahar has a good claim to be the worst big city in the world (if you have other candidates — Mogadishu? Pyongyang? — please propose them in the comments), but it is a place where in the course of a single rather uncomplicated afternoon you could buy aspirin, eat a nice sit-down meal of pilaf and Fanta, try on a stylish red dress, and reserve a round-trip ticket to Manchester, England. Not many war zones resemble Stalingrad anymore, certainly not this one.”

I doubt the red dress was for himself; his clothing tends to be a bit more conventional than that.