Sylvia's Journal

Our first work day of the Holy month of Ramazan started with a ceremony that included a long recitation from the Holy Qu’ran, followed by prayers to usher in this month of daytime fasting. I had forgotten about the event and had rushed down at the last minute. With such ceremonies I never know whether I should attend them, out of respect, or whether I should not be there. I asked one of my female colleagues whether I should quickly go to my office to get my chador to cover my head, to which she replied, “yes, it would be better.” And so I sat there with my head covered listening to the slow, long, nasal cadence of the recitation, wondering how long it took the young man to learn to do it so flawlessly.

Gifts were handed out at the end, a booklet, I presume with prayers, and boxes with dates – the food with which the fast is broken. And then everyone went to work. I had asked the kitchen to keep bringing me a thermos with boiled water so I could at least have my morning cup of Nescafe. For the rest of the day I made do with one hardboiled egg and a airplane peanut packet plus a can of V8 at lunch time. It was enough to keep me going and stop the rumblings in my stomach. Steve went home for lunch to have something more substantive.

Our workdays now end at 3 o’clock as the half hour for lunch is removed from the workday. the ministry is a bit more lenient, letting people go home at 1 PM. In this summer month with its very long days this means that there is still a long wait for it to get dark, about sixteen hours without food and water. But here people don’t see it like that – it is a collective experience of sacrifice and suffering, followed by, what I suspect, joyous family meals together at nightfall and before sunrise. I joined the crowd, eager to leave my hot and stuffy office, to sit for awhile in an air conditioned room and cool off. I suspect most of my colleagues probably laid down for a long nap.

I am preparing for a private MBTI session with one official in the ministry. Reading through all the materials I realized how much I miss this kind of contact with individuals, helping people to become more self aware and recognize their own and other people’s gifts. With all the criticism of the MBTI that I have encountered over the years, it still is one of the best and most compelling tools to help people look at their interactions with the world around them and the world of ideas and thoughts inside them. An new lens on interpersonal relations, whether with a spouse or with one’s nemesis, is always eagerly received in my experience. If, as a result of this looking, people stop wanting other people to be more like themselves the pay off will be grand.

The first day of Ramazan was hot, long and quiet, even for Steve and me who are not fasting. For Steve fasting is more than entirely unimaginable, for me simply hard to imagine. Yet I know from my more devout Muslim colleagues, here and in other parts of the Muslim world, that for them the fast is a significant, holy, even joyous duty.

I spent most of the day listening to Sherlock Holmes stories, four audio books I downloaded from the Manchester public library, while working on the sampler for Sita and Jim – I have just one month to get it finished. I have eight more diamonds of various sizes to complete.

In the afternoon Farid and his brother, a medical student, came by to say hello, collect another donation for the tennis court from one of my colleagues and to talk about his brother’s vision for health services to the severely underserved Hazara population on the western side of the city, the same place where the wool factory is.

Their father worked for MSH some 30 years ago in Ghazni. I called Steve down to join us and be inspired by these two delightful young men who are bright lights in an otherwise dark, depressing and dysfunctional Kabul.

Steve had worked in the district where the boys were born. He treated us to lots of wonderful stories about the place some 40 years ago. There had been quite a bit of progress since he was last there. But when he asked the medical student about how young people are currently trained to become doctors, the news was disappointing.

Things appeared more or less the same they were decades ago: medical students with less than one year to graduation who had never examined a woman, taken blood pressure, held retractors in surgery. It is a bit similar to the little progress in primary school textbooks (none if to judge by the 3rd grade textbook I am using in my Dari class). It leaves one wondering what happened to the millions of dollars and years of technical assistance that were poured into improving the situation?

Our conversation drifted into the topic of the Hazaras, the ethnic group to which the boys belong, and their treatment, as a minority despite the fact they are the third largest ethnic group in Afghanistan. When Farid mentioned how Abdurrahhman Khan (Emir of Afghanistan from 1880 to 1901) had killed or chased away a significant portion of the Hazara population in the late 1800s, Steve pulled out copies of two of Kiplings tongue-in-cheek ballads about the cruel king who was his contemporary. We all listened spellbound as Steve read his favorite poem. Singing, and reading poetry are two of Steve’s many gifts.

In the evening Steve and I watched Bertie Wooster and Jeeves, only the second of countless episodes Axel had bought back in the US in May. I have watched a few episodes alone and realized tonight that one has to watch these movies in company; they are much more fun that way.