“My wife thought I was mad,” he said. “She had never seen skiing and could not understand why we had to lug these big boots and poles instead of pots and pans.”
But for Kargar, whose family set up Afghanistan’s first ski resort and who became national champion in 1978 at the age of 16, the skis were all that remained of his teenage ambition.
“I had been taking part in world championships in France and Japan and was hoping to compete in the Winter Olympics, then the following year the Russians came. After that I did not dare go out with my skis and sticks because I feared the troops would think they were a rifle and shoot me.”
Today Afghanistan’s former champion skier cuts a lonely figure on Maranjan mountain, part of the range circling the capital. With just four sets of skis and two pairs of boots, he is hoping to open a ski school and revive the sport single-handedly.
Ragged-clothed children from the mud shacks in the valley below watch intrigued as the 43-year-old in goggles performs skilful turns on his battered skis. “They think I am crazy,” he said. “No one knows skiing in Afghanistan any more but before the Russian invasion we had a resort with a ski-lift and world-class skiers.”
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The makeshift piste is so short that it takes just 20 seconds for him to reach the bottom. “The problem is landmines,” he explained. “There are very good mountains all around Kabul but you have no idea what you are skiing over. This is one of the few slopes we know has been cleared.”
Afghanistan is one of the most heavily mined countries in the world. According to the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, there are still about 80 victims a month in the country, many of them children. Kabul is full of people with missing legs or arms who remove artificial limbs as they kneel to pray.
Apart from landmines, Kargar worries about becoming a target for US forces. “They might think I’m Al-Qaeda, this man all alone high in the mountains above the city.”
As everywhere in Kabul, the mountains bear plenty of reminders of the years of war. Maranjan mountain was the stronghold of General Abdul Rashid Dostum in the 1990s, between Ahmad Shah Massoud’s forces to the north and those of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar to the south, and overlooks a row of shelled-out buildings.
Just down the road is the National Olympic Committee where Kargar now works training the national football team, half of whom defected recently during a trip to Italy. His office overlooks the stadium where only a few years ago he watched Taliban hang people from the goalposts and cut off hands and legs before driving around town, waving the dismembered limbs to the people in the bazaar.
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The photographs he takes out of men and women skiing together and enjoying après-ski drinks were shot 30 years ago but it is hard to believe that this is the same Afghanistan. Today’s Kabul is a place of burqas, barefoot street-children begging and men with beards.
The Kargar family’s interest in the sport came after his uncles saw a German skiing and started to copy him. His father went to Iran to buy skis and soon the whole family had learnt, including his sisters. With the backing of the tourism authority, they developed their resort at Argandhi, 45 minutes outside Kabul.
“Skiing became very popular,” Kargar said. “Kabul University had a ski club, the foreigners had a club, there was our club and many people would go to Argandhi at the weekends.”
But when the Red Army arrived in 1979, Argandhi found itself on the frontline between the communist forces and those of Hekmatyar. The ski resort was destroyed and the area around littered with mines. The young Kargar watched in tears, praying for the war to end. But as the fighting continued year after year and he grew older, he knew that he would never again compete against the world champions.
“Throughout all this wartime every winter when I saw snow I was dying to ski and I felt very sad. But the last years under the Taliban there was a drought and no snow anyway.”
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Two years ago, Kargar finally put on his skis for the first time in a quarter of a century. “It was hard as I had become old and stiff but it came back,” he said.
Now Afghanistan’s only skier wants to open a ski school. Two weeks ago he listened to the news of the London conference on Afghanistan at which donors pledged £6 billion over the next five years. “I hope that the international community could use just a little bit of this to help de-mine mountains, provide equipment and rehabilitate slopes,” he said.
Some might question whether skiing is a priority in a country where only 6% have electricity and there are so few clinics that it is the world’s most dangerous place to have a baby. But Kargar insists: “Sport is important for reconciliation and keeping young people away from opium and fighting. Maybe I could even teach it to warlords.”
His solitary silhouette up in the mountains above the shattered city has attracted attention particularly among the affluent few with satellite television, which broadcasts Ski Sunday. “I’m getting many people asking if I will teach them, including girls,” he said.
The interest has made Kargar hopeful that with some help, Afghanistan might be ready to send a ski team to the 2010 Winter Olympics. “I will never go to the Winter Olympics now,” he said, “but maybe I can help others.”