Sylvia's Journal

I woke up at 4 AM. I played solitaire on my battery-operated computer while eating stroopwafels, until the power came on at about 5 AM.

Yesterday seems worlds away, the elections even further. In Dubai I had breakfast in the club lounge of the Renaissance Hotel. For some reason we MSH travelers are considered specially important and are lodged on the club floors, with complementary breakfast and free internet. Everyone calls me Miss Sylvia. The staff is personable, I suspect trained to be like that but I don’t particularly care for it, maybe because it is part of some customer service manual. My Afghan colleagues also call me Miss Sylvia, a literal translation of ghanem Sylvia, but there I don’t mind it because I actually have a real relationship with them. The waitresses say my name each time they do something that involves me, as if fearful that someone will tattle on them when they address me or serve me without mentioning my name. I pick the Arab breakfast: baba ganoush, olives, goat cheese – memories of a distant past.

I am treated like royalty for the simple reason that I (MSH, or make that the American taxpayer) can afford to stay in the several-hundred-dollars-a-night extravaganza. On my own dime I would never stay in a place like this. My Calvinistic upbringing has some difficulty with this ostentatious wealth and luxury that stand in stark contrast, not only to the place I am heading to but also most of the rest of the world.

An op-ed piece in the local newspaper congratulates the Arab countries on coming out of the financial crisis with flying colors, heralding a new era in which they, not those arrogant Europeans and Americans, set the terms of world affairs. The tone of the piece annoys me.

Dubai’s terminal 2 is where the UN flight to Kabul departs from. It has been under construction since 2006. I don’t see much improvement other than that everything is now in another place, smoking has been banned and the little snack bar has become a Mc Donalds. The bright and cold fluorescent lights are still there; the bare walls amplify the sounds that bounce around in the small space and hurt my ears. This includes the sounds coming from the snowy TV screens mounted in each corner; background noise that’s gotten to the foreground. No one else seems to be bothered.

I am standing in several queues with women covered in black. There is much nervous shouting and packing and unpacking of luggage as maximum limits have been reached. The women are stressed and squat down, their voices angry and shrill. They push and shove. I try to imagine what it would be like to be in a fearful crowd with them, when things go wrong, when people feel hurt, scared or panicked. Here, for some people, the stress of travel is enough already. I pick up these stressful vibes too easily. I am unsettled by them, I think.

Once I am in the plane I realize that all the unsettledness comes from my last experience on this same (UN) plane, on April 10 to be exact. I recognize the crew – the same pilot, the same flight attendants who dashed to the rear of the plane when we stalled. The uneasy feeling I have had since landing in Dubai and which I did not want to recognize has nothing mysterious about it, its source obvious.

All through the flight I am tense, my senses tuned to any change in sound, altitude. I get really tense when we are in the clouds and relieved when they clear and the Hindu Kush become visible. The path through the mountains to the airport is clear, but still, I am not as relaxed as I usually am, and them when we land, a deep sigh.

It takes a couple of hours to get from the tarmac to the guesthouse. We drop Mourid, the MSH expediter, off at a bus stop, he goes to class in the evening. The city is bustling; the weekend has started. Everything is covered with dust; the colors are muted because of it.

I am dropped off at guesthouse number zero, where I stayed the last time, but now I am in the building across the yard where the rooms have private bathrooms. Nice. I meet my housemates, two of them leaving tomorrow, one, Steve, residing here for the long haul and two more, like me, on temporary duty. I saw Jon last when we were both in Haiti in the summer. We all had dinner together. I offered Dutch cheese and chocolate for desert and discovered that what I really should have brought is coffee. The Nescafe-fed guests are starved for some real coffee. I am told it can be had, at a price.