Sylvia's Journal

Kabul International Airport is very crowded in the morning because most departures are scheduled early. We found enormous crowds and long lines of people at the various check points. On those occasions (I believe they are the only ones), it is good to be a woman here because there are few lines and less check points. Most of the travelers are men.

We flew in a small plane over the magnificent and ragged mountains. All the tops are still covered with snow, and, given that it is the hottest month now, will probably stay that way. We flew low, may be 1500 feet above the mountains and I could make out the half frozen ice dams, shimmering turquoise in the sun. In less than an hour we landed on a flat strip between the mountains, near the fast flowing Kokcha River that merges further north with the Amu Darya into Tajikistan.

We were taken to the Aria guesthouse, half above, half behind a hardware store with an ancient and smoky generator sputtering in the otherwise clear mountain air. It took awhile to get our rooms assigned because of double bookings. Finally I ended up with one of my colleagues in a room with two beds, a fan, a tiny refrigerator, a shower/toilet and, to my great surprise, an internet cable that connected me to the world.

My colleague took off her various coverings and stretched out on the bed. It seemed that the program for the morning was ‘recovering from the trip.’ Even though it had been a very short trip, I felt tired and as soon as I stretched out I fell asleep. We were woken up from our nap by a knock on the door. As by reflex, all the coverings went back on. A tray with three packets of cookies (‘Jam Hearts’), a thermos with green tea, a packet of UHT cream, a jar of Russian cherry jam and two Laughing Cow cheese triangles was placed on the floor.

I commented that this felt like a vacation for me but my roommate said it was boring. “Why?” I asked, “When else do we have time so simply hang out and talk?” But for her, being in the province is about being shut in because of the uneducated country bumpkins (men) who are a nuisance. As a woman she is at a disadvantage; all the cover ups, despite the heat underneath them, are seen as a necessary evil, a form of protection against male mischief. For her Kabul is a much better place.

Like two girls in a dorm room we talked. She talked about her time as a refugee in Iran, as a doctor in one of the Northern provinces in Afghanistan, under the Taliban. Although life was boring then too, at least she was allowed to work as a doctor and see patients. Provincial life was better there than in the big cities.
Despite everything that is wrong in Afghanistan for women, for her it is still better being here than in Iran where she and her family were treated as second class citizens. “When an Iranian child cried,” she told me, “the parents would threaten that the Afghans would come and take the child away.” Afghans as boogey men, not that much difference from the reactions traditionally dressed Afghan men get in the western world.

In Iran she was harassed in the market for letting a strand of hair show; encircled by stern looking men who accused her, then in her twenties, of not respecting the customs of the country that had so graciously accepted her and her family as refugees. For four years she was bored out of her mind, crocheting bedspreads and table covers that they would sell in the market (‘for a good price as they were very fine!’). Now she is a highly respected member of one of my teams, one of the few senior women on our staff.