Sylvia's Journal

Steve had taken us out to dinner last night. We ate the best Indian food in Kabul. The restaurant did not have a great atmosphere or décor but the taste of the food made up for the lack of it many times over; and Axel could get a beer, a great treat these days.

We drove back across town to our house on the eve of Ashura. The entrance to the big Shia mosque near our was house was decked out in green, red and black banners that said ‘welcome with Hussein,’ in the swirly and decorative Dari script. Hundreds of cars and motorbikes were lined up on the road, either parked or already cruising, an activity that was to go on all through the night and next day.

Many of the cars, mini buses and bikes have enormous green, red or black flags tied to them, reminding me of the giant American flags that we saw during the first few months after 9/11 in the US. But this is not about patriotism. It is about grief. The Shia are mourning the death of Hussein, the grandson of the prophet.

We were all told to stay at our houses – not a great sacrifice on our part and a welcome holiday for doing things we have no time for during the week (like reading and sewing and finally finishing that darn glove).

I had no interest in seeing any of the parades that were taking place in the Shia sections of town. The chance of seeing young men beating themselves bloody had no attraction to me. In the days leading up to Ashura Axel had seen a man carrying what looked like a snow chain except that it had sharp spikes on it. Steve had quite a few stories from his time in Shiraz, several decades ago, that made my skin crawl. Staying home seemed like a very good idea.

All day the local TV stations beamed us images of mullahs preaching and mosques filled with hundreds of men dabbing their eyes with handkerchiefs and moaning in wave after wave of collective grief. Women were wearing green head bands in separate services, though preached to by a male. One channel showed the Hollywood (but certified) film ‘The Message,’ last night and again in the morning.

Only one (of our few local channels) had a secular program on this otherwise holy (and holi-)day, an Iranian movie about a schoolmistress and an epileptic and mute school girl, traumatized after she saw her mother drown in the family’s swimming pool while the father was out hunting with his buddy.

The guilt-ridden father was handsome and young. He had to be both father and mother to the girl, washing and ironing her clothes albeit clumsily. The two naughty sons of the hunting buddy teased the poor girl and set fire to the house dressed up as American Indians, feathers, tomahawks and all. The fire nearly killed the girl. but then everything worked out fine with the schoolmistress becoming the new mom (and the dad, I am sure, handing over the chores).

Because the mistress was teaching a class full of mute girls she spoke Farsi slowly and I could follow much of the story. The film’s message of the redemptive power of love was quite different from the message beamed out from all the other religious channels, emphasizing hatred of the enemy and bottomless grief.

I finally finished knitting the right glove while watching TV and listening to my book on tape from the Manchester library. It’s not quite perfect but good enough to serve its purpose. Now I can unravel the clawlike left glove and try to duplicate the right one, in mirror pattern. It is a good omen for other difficult things I have been trying to do.