Axel had dinner at our house with a woman not his wife while I had dinner with four men not my husbands. Such things get frowned upon when you are an Afghan (woman), but we are forgiven because we are foreigners, odd creatures with strange habits.
We had invited Pia for dinner before I realized that I was supposed to go out for dinner with one of MSH’s VPs who is visiting from Boston. He is the boss of the boss of the boss of the boss of my boss, important enough to join for dinner. And so I left before our dinner guest arrived. When I returned from dinner she was still there. Axel had dragged out dinner long enough for me to catch the tail end of both the dinner and the Lebanese Gris de Gris.
Today I paid dearly for having taken a four day vacation in which I had refused to attend to email. The presence of our VP required all sorts of things not on our usual Sunday schedule: an all staff meeting to introduce our elevated visitor, a courtesy visit to Her Excellency at the ministry, lunch, a trip to the carpet place on Chicken Street and finally a one-on-one meeting filled every minute of the day. It wasn’t until 3:30, just about the time that everyone else left for home, that I could finally start to tackle the accumulated emails and provide promised responses that all need to be taken care off before we leave for Holland.
I started the day waking up from a night full of dreams in which the ugliness of Afghanistan was contrasted with the beauty of the place. The dream images must have come from our visit to the clothing factory where things of great beauty were produced alongside with army uniforms; where the most extraordinary roses bloom in front of blast walls and razor wire, where beautiful carpets are laid out on the dirty road, inviting cars to drive right over them.
Dirty-clean, cloudy-sunny, dusty-clear, chaos-harmony, difficult-easy, war-peace.
Sylvia's Journal 
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