Sylvia's Journal

Our man in charge of security called it ‘goofy’ but somehow that doesn’t seem to describe it properly when men in uniform tell foreigners to get out of their car and hassle them (‘knock down’ it was called in Australian). This didn’t happen to us but to friends with whom we were supposed to have had dinner tonight. We cancelled and stayed home, cooking our own dinner of Afghan pad thai.

There is a high alert, like a code orange, that has been hovering over the city for some days now. Apparently an Indian delegation is in town to call the authorities to account for the Indian casualties in the last attack; insult upon insult upon injury after two embassy bombings and now their people who were lodging in the destroyed guesthouse.

The US warden circulated another warning, with a precise location. I am glad we live and work nowhere near that location and I wondered about people who do.

Security cleared Julie and me for our Friday massage in Wazir Akbar Khan and the masseuses expertly kneaded the kinks out of my taut muscles. Living under a code orange is no fun.

Afterwards, all oily and relaxed we joined Axel for a lovely spring walk in Bagh-e-Bala park. We saw our first spring blossoms on the rows of almond trees, growing well protected on the sunny side of the hill.

Axel had printed out pictures of the various people we had photographed there, among them the mudir of the pleasure palace. He rewarded us with access to the place, since he had to key to the padlock.

He asked me whether I had brought the medicine (dawa), a request I had clearly not understood at our last visit. He explained once again, this time I understood. He wants medicine that makes him strong and to illustrate this he flexed his weak biceps. Since our last visit I had learned the words for strong and weak and was able to hold up a good chunk of my end of the Dari conversation until he lapsed into Pashto. Next year, I promised.

He told us the pleasure palace is being turned into a guesthouse and to illustrate this he pointed at the electrical wires that were coming out of the walls everywhere. The large Olympic sized pool will also be cleaned up and filled. It’s hard to imagine but it’s a great idea. If Karzai wants it to happen, as he claims, it will. Karzai is after all his boss, he should know.

From there we went back into town for lunch and latte in the sun and in the company of a father and son (or daughter) cat who were after our chicken wrap.

The rest of the afternoon we went shopping in the area that only a week before had been blown to pieces. Things had been cleaned up but broken glass was still visible everywhere, from the top of the buildings down to the ground. Many shop windows, including those as far away as Chicken Street, were cracked or gone and replaced by plastic sheeting.

The sidewalks were cluttered by large piles of twisted metal and other debris and then there was of course the big hole in the ground where the guesthouse has been.

This is something you realize when you live close to such disasters: except for those who died, life goes on.