The strange dude in the Afghan coat

The other day on television, someone mentioned Afghan coats and it reminded me of the time I was the proud possessor of such a coat, even though it wasn’t mine. Although I travelled overland through Asia in 1969 when Afghan coats were becoming quite fashionable, I didn’t buy one on the journey primarily because I couldn’t afford it. As we were headed East towards warmer climes, such a heavy coat also didn’t seem practical.

In one of the first houses I shared in Bangkok, another occupant had bought a beautiful sheepskin Afghan coat during his own overland trip. He had not worn it once in Thailand for obvious climatic reasons. When he had to suddenly return home to England he left the coat at the house, but later asked that if anyone in our household happened to be going to England in the coming year, to bring it with them and he would pick it up.

I flew to England before Christmas 1972 and took the coat with me to hand it over. I felt like an idiot as I perspired my way through Don Mueang airport, but when we were greeted by freezing temperatures at Heathrow, I was extremely thankful I had it.

Because of the cold weather, I wasn’t going to give up the coat easily and wore it everywhere. I’m glad to say it had been cured so it didn’t stink like a dirty wet dog when it rained, which was a problem with many similar uncured coats. I thought the coat was terrific, but I probably looked a complete twit. I didn’t care as long as it kept me warm.

Shortly before I returned to Bangkok, I got in touch with the owner and reluctantly handed it over in a London pub. But for three weeks in my neighbourhood, I had been the “Bloke With the Coat”. That was probably the last time in my life that I wore something “trendy”.

Camels and goats

During that brief stay in England, the Afghan coat proved a good conversation opener. It also allowed me to bore everyone to death with tales of travelling through Afghanistan, a place few people had heard of in those days and even fewer could point out on a map. All they seemed to know was some dubious cockney rhyming slang about the Khyber Pass.

So my colourful yarns featuring rifle-bearing Pashtun tribesmen, camel trains snaking through mountain passes, being chased by wolves, negotiating the Hindu Kush and dining on curried goat balls, fell on deaf ears. I suspect the reaction wherever I showed up was “Oh God, he is going to ramble on about Afghanistan again”. Which I did gleefully, stoically ignoring the collective yawns. However, I refrained from telling them I was sick as a dog in Kabul.

Blame it on the Beatles

Afghan coats became very trendy in England in the late 1960s, having been introduced to London in 1966 by American Craig Sams who had spotted some while backpacking in Kabul the year before. He sold a batch to the cleverly named Chelsea boutique Granny Takes a Trip, dubbed “the first psychedelic boutique in Groovy London”. When The Beatles were spotted leaving the boutique wearing their new Afghan coats, everybody had to get them.

In the late ‘60s, any self-respecting pop star would be seen in an Afghan coat. David Bowie and Eric Burdon even wore them at their respective weddings. And those who really wanted to make a statement would wander around the West End wearing an Afghan coat while walking their Afghan Hound after smoking Afghan hashish.

The Beatles went on to wear the coats in their not very good Magical Mystery Tour film and then displayed them, inside out, on the cover of the much better album of the same name. Lennon’s eldest son Julian later bought his father’s coat at an auction for £30,000 (1.3 million baht).

Sorry, no knickers

Although the movie was a disaster, the aforementioned Magical Mystery Tour album released in 1967 produced some of The Beatles’ most inventive efforts.

The standout was Lennon’s extraordinary I Am The Walrus. Nobody had heard anything quite like it before and the lyrics, probably drug-fuelled, were out of this world. In fact, it was all too much for the BBC which banned the song, believe it or not, for using the word “knickers”. Lennon was reportedly hugely amused when music critics tried to interpret what deep meaning lay behind “semolina pilchard, climbing up the Eiffel Tower” or “sitting on a cornflake, waiting for the van to come”.

For several months, I Am the Walrus was the most-played disc on my local pub’s jukebox in Reading. After a few pints, everybody joined in with the lyrics, especially the “goo goo g‘ joob” bits. Those nights, the pub was really heaving and the odd Afghan coat would even put in an appearance, but alas no Afghan Hounds.

Introducing an ‘ism’

The remoteness with which Afghanistan was regarded in the past and even in the present is best exemplified by the spawning of the term “Afghanistanism”, which surfaced in both the US and Britain, and is particularly relevant to the journalistic practice. It is roughly defined as “the practice of concentrating on problems in distant parts of the world while ignoring controversial local issues”.

Some might even argue that today’s Post-Script column is an example of Afghanistanism.