Sylvia's Journal

Axel’s birthday did not quite go as planned. It started out OK. We picked up a friend in town and went for a lovely walk in Bagh-e-Bala, toured the little pleasure palace again, took pictures of the caretaker, and promised to bring him medicine that will make him strong. We finished our walk with a cup of green tea sitting on a carpeted platform between the rose bushes.

After that I went for my usual Friday massage. Monalisa had made a slip in the bathroom and had pulled a muscle in her arm so I got to have Jamila work on me. Massages are not very Afghan. Afghan women would probably be horrified with the idea of total strangers touching their body, even if female. But Afghan-Americans brought the practice here and Jamila became a masseuse, a very good one.

For a birthday party we had planned to go to a fundraiser for Razia-jan’s girls’ school but then things started to go bad. An ISAF SUV hit a vehicle with four young Afghan men in it. As it happened, these four men were the sons and nephews of one of my staff, on their way to buying supplies for an upcoming wedding – my sewing project for the day had been for that very same wedding. One of the nephews died instantly, the others were taken to the hospital in critical condition.

In the meantime demonstrators set the ISAF vehicles on fire and a large crowd collected shouting and throwing stones. It was good that we weren’t anywhere near. We are not exactly sure what happened; there were reports of gunfire and efforts by the local police to quiet things down. We decided to stay put and skip the fundraiser.

The party dress for the wedding is done now, but the wedding is probably not going to take place any time soon. My colleagues all rallied around the very shaken fathers and said their prayers for the 24 year old who died.

There are really no words for this tragedy. It is all intensely sad, especially since it was not an ordinary traffic accident. It made us realize that even when things are quiet at the surface, underneath there is much resentment against the foreign military who have hijacked the city with their blast walls, occupying enormous tracts of Kabul’s prime real estate, who have blocked streets and now this, convoys that make everyone stop in their tracks, except these kids.

It was not a good ending to Axel’s birthday and it wiped out all the positive thoughts I had during my massage about my work here and things lightening up.