Against the southern and northern wall plaques have been put up memorializing the 100s of troops who have died here. One both sides of the cemetery are, chiseled into marble, long list of the names of young men who got killed in Afghanistan in the last 10 years, Italians, Germans, Dutch, Brits, American. On the southern wall there are the remains of headstones from over 150 years ago when Brits were also fighting here and not doing so well. Above each stone, neatly typed out, a story of the fallen hero. Sherlock Holmes’ Watson was injured in that same war.
After our cemetery walk we checked out a new coffee house that claims to be the first and only Starbucks in Afghanistan. Inside the fairly new establishment, the coffee bar part of the compound, we found large bags of Starbucks coffee next to neatly arranged coffee cups and glasses with the logo of Starbucks, printed on paper, cut out and pasted on. It looked very real from a distance. We had cappuccino, latte, espresso and Black forest cake that came from the Serena hotel, an off limits place for us.
Afterwards we drove to the main shopping street in old Kabul and wandered along small stalls watching what ordinary Afghans do when in town, while they watched us as if we came from outer space (not many tourists here). We bought something that looked like a scallion pan cake, deep fried, from a food stall by the side of the road; Axel declined but Steve, Alison (who is here on a mission for a sister project) and I threw all the warning about not eating street food to the wind. So far we are doing OK; we all thought it was well worth the risk.
I bought one ‘seer’ (about 7 kilo) of kapok to fill the pillows that I have made from the embroidered and patchwork textiles that I bought last week off Chicken Street. Today I turned all these into 6 pillows. I am quite pleased with my handiwork.
While stuffing the pillows with the kapok that comes in industrial-size bags I practiced my Dari with the day guard. When I heard something come by the house playing a tune I asked whether it was the ice cream man. It was! I asked the guard whether he liked ice cream (he did) and before I knew it he had gone out and bought Axel and me a partially melted Herat ice cream bar. It seems that the cooling mechanism of the tiny hand-driven ice cream cart was not working all that well and so we had to eat the ice cream as quick as we could.
For dinner Axel prepared an Afghan variant of fajitas and invited 6 people over to eat them with us. The talk of the town was the raid on several of the alcohol-serving restaurants last night. For those who need their beer and wine such raids put a damper on the fun of being in Kabul. We are learning to live quite happily without alcohol but occasional visits to these restaurants have been a treat. It seems some of them are now closed for awhile and also had their alcohol supply confiscated. One can only imagine where that went.
Sylvia's Journal 
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