Sylvia's Journal

I had dinner with one of our students from the BU course in which I actually taught (July 2006) rather than the one where I was listed as faculty but was indisposed (July 2007). Meghann had suggested we have dinner in one of the few restaurants in Kabul that MSH security staff allowed me to go. It is a congenial Tex Mex place owned and run by a woman who, in her day job writes the good stories about interventions that help Afghans to get back on their feet again.

I was taken there in a sturdy SUV with driver and guard. I don’t know if he was armed but imagine he was. It was a little tricky when I left the place a few hours later to find my car and driver/guard combo among the line up of similar cars and grim looking men, in the dark because you are scanning for exactly the kind of people and cars that you imagine your kidnappers would look like. Luckily they recognized me and brought me safely home through the empty and barricaded streets of Kabul.

A war zone it is, especially without the people. The Serena Hotel that was bombed in January and where Sita and stayed two years ago looked liked it was the Pentagon. Whole streets are blocked by large chunks of concrete and barbed wire everywhere. This is the scar tissue of armed conflict. It is what is left after the bombs have exploded and the fear is firmly planted in people’s minds. And then there is the futility of it all; the barricades go up afterwards, like the shoe checks at the airport. The Serena is unlikely to get bombed again and may well be the safest place in Kabul now with all that protection.

Axel and I also have scar tissue. We don’t know exactly what scar tissue looks like but I suspect it is ugly too and looks and acts like those barricades as it obstructs the flow of things. Axel’s scar tissue is more severe and problematic, especially in his hand where the muscles have not worked properly for so long and have shriveled up to make movement very hard and stressful for the remaining muscle strands. I have scar tissue in my foot and try to break it down through exercises but it is slow going.

I am also struggling with some scar tissue in my heart; that too obstructs the flow of something. I once wrote a little poem that came back to me yesterday: The other day I found/this hard spot in my heart/The one called me and mine/That keeps me separate/From the divine. My heart’s scar tissue is about relationships that have been damaged and obstructed flows of communication. It is creating puddles of stagnant water. It stinks.