Sylvia's Journal

The poem is translated now, in more or less poetic Dari. I could not get my teacher to take poetic liberties so the Dari may not sound quite as much like a poem as I would liked. Now I have to work on the pronunciation and practice a bit in the office tomorrow so people can understand what I have to say.

With three hours of Dari lessons and another few hours of catching up on work that had not been done and needed be done before the start of the new work week there was little time left to do all the thousands of things I always plan to do over the weekend: cross stitching, knitting while listening to the adventures of Antony, Cleopatra and the Roman empire (he died, she’s already ensconced in her tomb but still alive and the Roman Empire strong as ever) and cooking.

We had some old and some new friends over for dinner; a small intimate gathering around good food and good conversation – something that makes our constrained existence here so much more interesting.

Now the last guests have left, some by an unmarked car, one by a marked car and the others on foot. We all live by different rules. Which rule depends on one’s employer. Our security regime is somewhat in the middle of those three options, nearly the best of all worlds.