Unpublished piece from 2004 written by Dominic Medley

Wais Faizi is the manager of the Mustafa Hotel in Kabul. He’s
our friend and hero of the hotel. He’s been a friend to every
guest that has ever stayed there. He’s helped them all, whatever
they do, during their time in Kabul.

Wais was probably first made famous by the UK Sunday Times
correspondent Christina Lamb. In December 2001, just a couple of
weeks after the fall of the Taliban, she drove around Kabul in
Wais’ 1968 Camero convertible. Christina nicknamed Wais “The
Fonz of Kabul”.

Wais is in his late thirties. He spent much of his childhood in
Germany and then New Jersey. His accent is from New York, where
he worked as a car dealer, mixed in with his love of Al Pacino
in the film Scarface.

For much of the 1990s Wais was in and out of Kabul from New
York. He grew his beard when necessary during the Taliban
regime, and shaved for the return to America.

Wais’ most treasured possession has to be his Glock automatic
pistol. He’s also got an infra red sight for it; he’s just
missing a silencer. On one occasion a fellow journalist Dan,
spotted someone walking on the roof of the Mustafa Hotel. Wais
rushed up to the terrace locking and loading his Glock as he ran
up the stairs. Sure enough on the roof was an Afghan crawling
along the corrugated metal. Wais shouted and then lit the guy up
like a Christmas tree with the red spot from the infra red dead
centre on his chest. Massood from the bar, a boxer, jumped onto
the roof and got the guy in a headlock. All the time Wais had
the roof crawler illuminated with his infra red sights. Wais
probably wasn’t desperate to let a round off, he spends enough
time in shooting ranges, but he would have done anything to
defend his family’s business. The Afghan claimed he was
returning to one of his shops where he’d left a key and couldn’t
get back in through the door.

Wais is one of the most generous people in Kabul. He throws
regular BBQs and kebab nights, he takes people out and about in
his convertible and his Wrangler jeep, he lays on Red, Black,
Blue and Green label Johnny Walker whiskeys and has always been
a source of information for journalists. In the early days of
the hotel at the end of 2001 and early 2002, every journalist in
Afghanistan ended up staying at the Mustafa Hotel. There was
just no where else to stay and no where else to hang out with
colleagues. But by the October 2004 presidential elections it
was interesting to see how many returned to stay in the Mustafa
Hotel or had moved to the more upmarket Gandamak Lodge set up by
BBC cameraman Peter Jouvenal. Wais would shout “I helped all
these guys and look how few of them god dam don’t even bother to
come and say hello. If it wasn’t for me here they’d be stuck in
the god dam Panjshir valley.”