Sylvia's Journal

Sometime when I watch the news I feel tugs into despair – as soon as one crisis fades from the front news, something else takes it place. The current Korean crisis reminds us of a previous Korean crisis. Axel remembers the drills at school. I was too little but remember my uncle whose arm got bent out of shape on his way to Korea. He always held his pipe in a funny way as a result.

But then, at bedtime, I read a few more pages about the history of this region and everything that we think awful and terrible now pales when compared to practices that were normal a couple of hundred years ago: lancing eyeballs, cutting off body parts, and one invasion after another, each followed by rape and pillaging. And that is just the history created and told by men. In all those history books there is no mention of women. I hate to think about what their lives were like, even during those short periods of quiet in between the periods of turmoil.

Today I spent much time on sorting out the sequencing of various procedures that require our passports. First I need to renew one of my two American passports, the one that expires in a few weeks. Then we will apply for an Indian visa. This requires the other passport, the one with the Afghan visa.

After that our work permit needs to be renewed which requires the same passport and without which we cannot even start to request another multiple entry visa to Afghanistan, which expires early January when we will probably be in Holland and without which we cannot get back in. Since getting a visa is a lengthy process, we need to get started soon and get all the other things out of the way. In that sense our lives here are very complicated.