Sylvia's Journal

We went out for dinner two nights in a row. Steve and I are more inert when it comes to dinner – we’d be fine just putting several leftovers on our dinner plates, nuke them and eat sitting around the large dining room table. But MP wants to get out. Steve and I are the followers. Yesterday that also included Hans. I had proposed we eat at home – after all the cook had made some nice dishes. But I put them in the over too early and too long. By the time everyone was ready to serve the food had shriveled up to about half its size and looked less than appetizing. It was not hard for MP to convince everyone to go out.

We piled into a car with two robust looking gentlemen in the front seat – our protectors – and drove across town to the area where the MSH office used to be, called Wazir Akbar Khan (WAK) and where many of the restaurants are that cater to foreigners. Yesterday we went for Iranian food: enormous amounts of meat, lamb chops, yohgurt, crusty rice and the hooka with pomegranate shisha as after dinner entertainment.

It was Hans’ last night with us. We hope that by now he is in Dubai and not stuck in Kandahar, a stop on the way to Dubai. We all miss him. Back at home we made silly photographs of Hans with his wooden shoes slippers in a blue burka and we dressed Steve up in a burka as well with one of the many headdresses and shields he bought on Chicken street. He looked like Ivan the Terror.

Today Said and his surrogate dad and (real) uncle arrived from the northeast and there was much to celebrate in addition to MP’s birthday. We all piled into the car again, now to an Indian restaurant, again in WAK. MP and I ordered a glass of wine (so we could toast) and Said kept looking at us, waiting for us to get tipsy and act silly – that is what he has either learned or seen – he explained that people who drink wine throw things off the table or fall with their faces in their food. We explained to him that you have to drink many glasses for that – we have each only one – and so we disappoint him. He doesn’t let us clink our wineglasses to his tea cup though, as if the wine affliction he predicts is contagious.

Since this is now the second weekend I am spending time with them I can quote my newly learned Dari proverb: yak roz did dost, dega roz did byadar (first you are friends, then brothers) and I shake hands with my new brothers; big grins all around.

At the restaurant we entertained ourselves by comparing animal sounds in Dari, American and Dutch – it’s always great fun to do this in multilingual company; we also sung happy birthday to MP and had Said guess our ages. MP comes out well, much younger than I. Without any hesitation he declares me old and Steve about the same age. It must be the grey hairs, which also means wise of course.