Sylvia's Journal

Today was a quiet day in Kabul but not in Kandahar and Mazar on the northern and southern ends of Afghanistan. I am getting quite inured to reports of fighting as long as it is not next door.

Preparations for the conference are proceeding with small complications that somehow seem to resolve themselves. Tomorrow we will do a dry run by those who are presenting – assuming that both presenter and poster or powerpoint are ready and available. Nothing can be taken for granted.

One of these complications is that the most senior ministry official cannot sign the several hundreds of certificates before I and the lead trainer, both of us also signatories, have signed them but the lead trainer is in Dubai and won’t be back until tomorrow night while the government has entered its weekend. Still, I think everything will work out OK in the end. Our champion turns out to be there after all.

I joined some friends, one of them the neighbor of the strongman who was killed the other night, at an empty French restaurant with 70 dollar bottle table wine poured into tea cups. We declined that opportunity even though we don’t have many such chances.

Instead we sipped our water while Michael gave us part three, the grand finale, of being a neighbor to an 8 hour battle between the Taliban and the Karzai advisor. He was finally told by the friendly police to leave the (his) house as a suicide bomber was about to explode himself – which he did with a loud kaboom – not a pleasant sight. Getting away as far as possible from things that could break and also explode (like the fire truck) he settled down next to a heavily armed guard from Karzai’s inner circle who was eating a melon and got a piece. I am trying to imagine that scene.

Walking up to the restaurant we were asked to make way for an armored, blinded car, the kind that cost a quarter of a million dollars, followed by another one full of large men with large guns. I prayed that whoever was in the car was not on anyone’s hitlist and was relieved when the convoy had passed and we were out of ear and gunshot. Now I am a bit more suspicious when I see this kind of wealth and power go by and make sure I move in the opposite direction.

We settled on the terrace of the more or less empty restaurant. Outside on the lawn a large table was prepared as for a French Sunday family meal. The people sitting down were indeed French. I found, among them, the circus trainer lady whose boys we had seen tumbling last week. It was an animated (anime) dinner party, partially because of the many teapots and tea cups filled with a Bourgogne-colored liquid. They were drinking away what may well amount to a month’s salary for Afghan workers, while we, continuing to sip our water, after having discussed dread and dysfunction in Kabul, reviewed the Murdoch drama through an American, a British and an Australian lens – quite fun.