Sylvia's Journal

The grand finale turned out to be a Grand Finale after all. The conference was an all around success – the proof of that was in the pudding: senior people who said they could only come for a while stayed for hours, fascinated by the presentations and general upbeat and hopeful atmosphere. I was thrilled. Nearly everything went as flawless as it could be and the end result was very close to what we had envisioned about a month ago.

But it was also a Grand Finale because the decision to leave Afghanistan sooner than later was made final by announcing it to my boss and staff. When I will actually depart is not clear as I don’t know how much notice I need to give – the decision has lifted a stone from my shoulders.

In Dutch we say, when a difficult decision is finally made after long pondering, ‘the bullet has gone through the church.’ It’s a war term, dating several hundreds of years back, when churches were kept outside the line of fire. When the bullets finally went through the church a point of no return had been reached. That’s what has happened over the last 48 hours. As the Quakers say: ‘way opened.”

Steve arrived today and it is wonderful to have company again. I had instructed my cook, in my best Dari, to consult with the cook of guesthouse zero where Steve used to live, to find out about his eating habits: lots of meat or chicken or goat, lots of rice, no vegetables. And so he proudly showed me an oven dish full of chicken (for Steve) and a bowl of vegetables (for me).

But first I served him a G&T – this guesthouse is a little different from the others in that respect. It was the gin that had been sitting unopened since my return because I am not a lone drinker but this was an occasion to celebrate: a successful conference and company and the difficult decision made.

I don’t know how having a male guest in my house who is not my husband will be perceived and whether we will be a source of gossip. It hadn’t occurred to me at first but when it got dark, at time at which I usually draw the curtains of the living room, I decided to leave them open so the guards could see whether we were behaving properly.