Sylvia's Journal

Today we had lunch in local Afghan restaurant while we killed time in between a ministry meeting and our weekly meeting in the US government compound. Between the four of us we ate 2 kilos of the most delicious fried fish, a real treat in this landlocked country. The hot fish was sprinkled with a tasty spice mixture consisting of salt, dried chili pepper, cumin, coriander seeds and the powder made from green (unripe) grapes.

The name of the restaurant is Colbah Arman which our Afghan colleagues translated loosely as ‘the hut where you fulfill your greatest desires.’ Steve and I thought of something else than what our colleagues explained the words meant: a place where you meet with friends and enjoy good conversation and a good meal.

Talking about desire, while removing the pasta making machine from its box, yesterday, the cook and housekeeper must have discovered the instruction booklet that came with it. Its front page features a good looking young women with as her only piece of clothing, if you could call it that, a shawl made out of pasta (presumably created with the past machine) that is fringed at the bottom (something the pasta machine can also do), entirely covering the nakedness of her upper body.

They had stuck the picture up on the wall, as if a pin-up girl, above the knife block and the espresso machine, wedged between the wall and one of the cabinets. Right below it they stuck the two pictures Axel had made of them making the past (fully clothed). When I came home at the end of the day, the picture was still wedged between the wall and the cabinet, but pushed in enough that you couldn’t anymore see her pasta outfit or a hint of what the pasta covered.