Sylvia's Journal

I woke up with a poem in my head – a poem for International Women’s Day – and rushed down to type it before the lines would disintegrate upon leaving my semi-sleep state. I had gone to bed wondering what I would say at our celebration – there is that expectation – and my brain had clearly been working on the task while I slept. Amazing!

I have decided to turn it into a Dari poem. Afghanistan is a land of poets. I started the translation myself and, with the help of press-apply Dari characters on my keyboard, typed in the words I knew, right to left. When my knowledge of Dari was exhausted I wrote to the language school for an extra one hour lesson tomorrow to turn my dictionary words into real poetry. It is a bit of a stretch but that seems appropriate for International Women’s Day.

The gray blast walls on the way to the massage place have been painted a soft ocher color on one side of the narrow passageway that leads past all sorts of military places. I am curious who decided that it was a good use of (military) money to spend it on painting several thousand square feet of concrete. But only one side of the road has been painted which makes me think another part of the military must not think ocher all that important.

There was lots of maneuvering of large trucks between these gray (one side) and ocher (other side) walls; several looked like water or sewage trucks – Kabul is built on ledge and the sewer system is problematic. One of the trucks had the words ‘blue water – black water – grey water’ painted on its sides. I wondered whether they had painted the blue and gray water text on either side of black water to avoid any association with the company that used to have that name; a company that is not very popular here.

In the afternoon F. came over to our house to propose some designs around the sapphire stones that Lisa gave me for Valentine’s Day – rings for the girls and earrings for me. F. is part of a new company that was founded by graduates of the Turquoise Foundation’s revitalization of old Afghan crafts. After a three year study under the watchful eye of master jewelers he completed his schooling and struck out on his own. That is the idea. His shop is in Murad Khani where the jewelry school is now located, next to the ceramics and woodworking schools.

He brought more than his sketchbook – a large bag full of boxes with rings, necklaces, bracelets, pendants, lapis lazuli, polished and rough cut emeralds, rubies, tourmaline, turquoise, old coins turned into jewelry, finely worked Turkmen boxes and more. I talked Axel into a birthday present and stepped out of the room so he could complete the transaction and keep up the appearance of a future surprise.

I invited some friends and colleagues to partake in this jewelry feast, as if it was a Tupperware party – a concept of course unknown to F. I think F had a good day and expanded his network and several of us got some new treasures.

Axel has discovered how to rent movies via the internet. The downloading takes awhile but it is worth it as the movies disappear without us having to get ever larger hard drives. We watched A Room With A View and commented how similar the social mores and gender norms of England of 1900 were to those we see around us in Afghanistan one hundred years later.