Sylvia's Journal

Valentine’s Day is something else here. At Axel’s school the girls celebrate Valentine’s Day together, no boys. Somehow the notion of romantic love and red hearts doesn’t fit with the kind of boy-girl relationships this culture favors.

Still, one of the girls got two chocolates from a boy (giggle, giggle). ‘Chocolate’ here refers to any kind of chewy and non chewy candy. Thus the love-chocolate (real chocolate) relationship is a bit arbitrary and brown (or pink, white) and red don’t necessarly go together on this day. But if he had wanted to, Axel could have bought me a box of fancy chocolates. But instead he made me a card with a tulip motif, taken directly from the rug weaving business. It’s better than chocolates. The day does exist in shops that sell sweets to the foreign and Afghan elite.

During my visit at the ministry on Saturday I spotted Valentine cookies: oreo-type cookies with pink stuff in between and heart-shaped red cut outs in the top cookie. A love cookie so to speak. It felt out of place but my host explained that such habits as Christmas and Valentine’s Day come along with the returning diaspora. And shop keepers like any such new habit that has the potential to augment sales.

Tonight we are celebrating Valentine’s Day with Hameed and Mary at the romantic restaurant called Bella Italia which is situated, not very romantically, behind enormous blast walls on the other side of town. We don’t know either of our Valentine’s Day dates but have heard much (good) about Mary. We know nothing about Hameed other than that we suppose he is Afghan. Mary is bringing him along.

Last night we also went out, to a Korean restaurant, right down the street. We met up with Michael, a British nurse who grew up in a Salvation Army household in Sierra Leone. In the 60s Michael was a nurse to the Saudi king who got shot by his (the king’s) nephew. Michael was an eye witness to this family feud which landed him in a plush Saudi jail. He was treated well and received a daily allowance of Jimmy Walker Red. This was his second stint in jail. When he first arrived he was also put in jail, not quite as nice, because of holding a profession (nursing) associated with women. This created enough cognitive dissonance to overpower his six page royal visa and a royal invitation to nurse the king.

But somehow everything worked out for him and we are lucky to have found him on our path. He has an enormous reservoir of stories which will take many more dinners. Unfortunately for us, Michael is off to another adventure next month that will take him to Saigon. For some people life is never dull. For us it will be a little duller without him.