Sylvia's Journal

Just when I was reading about a drug kingpin and Taliban financier who is in a Manhattan jail (probably better than an Afghan one) and reaching the 4 kilometres on the elliptical machine I received a call from Sonia. Sonia was supposed to go to ninth grade in an American girls’ school next fall, something she had arranged on her own.

She had been accepted with a full scholarship and all expenses paid. Steve and I visited Sonia at her uncle’s house, met her mother and grandmother to make sure that Sonia had full family support. I was going to introduce Sonia to the people at the school where Axel teaches to meet other kids who will go to a US high school or college and start the preparations.

I had tried to reach her the last few weeks. She had been with relatives in Ghazni. The relatives got wind of the plans and threatened her father with something akin to ostracism from the family – a death sentence in this culture. And so Sonia will not go to school in America. Afghanistan, once again, shoots itself in the foot as far as I am concerned. I wish my Dari was good enough that I could tell each of her uncles, ‘don’t you understand that Afghanistan’s future lies with its women, young talent like Sonia, spunky, educated, committed and smart?’

Today was my first Thursday off. I didn’t quite know what to do with myself and so I did a bit of everything: knitting, reading, studying Dari, lunch with Sarah from the EU in a pricy French restaurant, and working out.

Axel picked me up and so he met Sarah, who is Italian. We discussed the troubles of the Italian staff from the only trauma hospital in the south. We all think they were framed for an alleged planned attack on Helmand’s governor’s. Sarah knows the war surgeon and wonders where the staff were taken. I can’t help but think that somebody is trying to get money – the Italians are known to have paid hefty ransoms in the past.

After lunch our driver Haji Safar took us to a semi-outdoor furniture market to get the locally produced rope furniture to complete our sitting arrangements in the yard. Except for the glass table tops we are really settled now.

The continuing drama of getting our colleagues to Switzerland is unfolding in ways that are unthinkable anywhere else in the world. I thought the last obstacle was getting out of Kandahar where fighting broke out that killed several people, including a 22 year old girl, staff member of our friend Pia. Our doctor got out unharmed but warned us that his frequent comings and goings through Kandahar airport is being noticed and he has to lie low for a while.

This afternoon I learned that the pair’s troubles weren’t over. The Pakistani police in Islamabad arrested them, asking for security documents, beyond the visa, that they didn’t have (and didn’t need) and so they were taken to the prison. In the meantime the window for picking up their Swiss visa was slowly closing (and with that their entire trip to Geneva) as the clock ticked steadily towards the weekend.

Luckily I didn’t find out until this email arrived: “after 2 hour discussion with police and pay[ing] of some money to police they discharged us and then we went to Swiss embassy and got the visa.”

I am holding my breath as there are so many other things that can go wrong between now and their arrival at the hotel in Geneva – yet, I should have faith as they have already overcome the most amazing obstacles: trips across the border without passports, a denied visa reviewed and re-granted, mayhem in Kandahar, prison in Islamabad.

Nothing is easy in this part of the world, except, as I am learning from reading Gretchen Peters’ Seeds of Terror, laundering drug money and financing the cycle of violence.