We had plumb forgotten about the royal wedding – it is not front page news here – until we turned on the BBC in the middle of the afternoon but by then the vows had already been exchanged. We watched the Duchess of Cambridge at the arm of her husband leave the Abbey. After that we stayed glued to the TV. It’s nice to for a change to see people gushing with love and other warm fuzzy feelings rather than looking grim and holding guns.
It was a beautiful day in Kabul and time for Axel to finally get out. He commutes between SOLA and our house, both in the same neighborhood, and needed a change of scenery.
After he dropped me off for my weekly massage indulgence in the middle of the vast US diplomatic and military complex – which required a nice long walk (even if it was between blast walls, tanks and people with guns) – he returned to the car and finally made it to the Shah bookstore of ‘The Bookseller of Kabul’ fame. He said he restrained himself and only bought stuff for SOLA: a large map of the world, an atlas and a book with Afghan legends. He is starting to turn SOLA into a real school rather than a regular home with a bunch of students inside. All this was inspired by our visit to Taktse International School in Sikkim.
I joined Axel later at the Bistro restaurant, a small piece of France off Chicken Street. Sitting there in the lovely garden with the most beautiful carpets draped along all the walls, inside and out, we enjoyed a nice and rather pricey lunch – the only thing missing was a cool glass of white wine – and could pretend for an hour or so that we were living someplace else.
Afterwards we walked over to our favorite carpet seller, who we had not visited for some time, to say hello and learn something more about carpets – he is a great and patient teacher. We could easily have dropped large amounts of money but restrained ourselves. We took pictures of those we liked a lot to add to our illustrated wish list.
For the first time since the supermarket bombing we ventured out into its sister store which is now barricaded behind thick steel plates with controlled entrance and exit sluices. Although the chances are very slim that a repeat will happen I was not quite at ease and was relieved when we were back in the car. I think it was just about that time that the vows were exchanged, a major world news event, with us oblivious to it all.
Sylvia's Journal 
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