Sylvia's Journal

Gritty is nothing to what it feels like to being woken up in the middle of the night by the bleep bleep sound of an SMS from our security team. We know the Intercontinental Hotel well – we used to go for weekly walks in the Bagh-e-Bala park last winter right below the hotel – something that now seems from another time. I attended several workshops and conferences in the hotel and always thought it was unassailable, with only one entrance road, high up on a hill.

But as Farooq explained to me this morning in his very wise ways, routine checks like the ones at the entrance to the hotel tend to get boring and people slack off. Only the American security people at the US embassy never slack off (probably because the consequences are very serious). Not so, apparently for the security forces at the hotel’s entrance road. Secondly, some of the terrorists may well have rented a room the night before – they don’t look any different from anyone else here in Afghanistan – how could you possibly tell a terrorist from a turbaned and robed Afghan?

After the initial wake up and checking out Aljazeera on the net I fell back into an uneasy sleep to wake myself up again by grinding my teeth just a tad too hard. In the office this morning we were all in a kind of post traumatic mood – some of my colleagues preferring to stay put in the compound rather than crossing the town to get to the ministry. Now that the immediate panic and sense of vulnerability has past we are simply sad and discouraged.

I did go to a meeting at the ministry in the afternoon, because not going there would make me feel even less useful and life, after all, does go on.