Sylvia's Journal

Friday and Saturday evening Axel and I presented a slide show of our time in Afghanistan. Friday’s event was for our Quaker Friends.

We showed up in our Afghan outfits. Axel in his embroidered white tombon peron with waskot. He had already worn this as the father of the bride at Sita and Jim’s wedding. I wore a dress that Razia Jan had made and Axel had gifted me for my birthday in Kabul – black with red and gold embroidery. Underneath I wore the lace-edged pantaloons that S. had made for me to go underneath the burqa. I did bring the burqa but didn’t wear it. It would have created a bit of a stir on this quiet middle class Beverly street.

Each time we present about our experiences we realize how constricted and negative people’s image is of Afghanistan. A word association game would probably always yield words like Taliban, violence, war, guns, corruption, Karzai.

On Saturday evening we presented the same slides to our closest friends and realized how little we had talked about our time and work in Kabul. When we came back we re-integrated rapidly into the old life of our friendship. Or we told stories without pictures, a very different experience.

In between these two events Axel perfected his meditation technique – meditation having become easier since he got off much of his medicine. I travelled south to pick up Nuha at the airport. She was my student at Boston University some years ago and is now a PhD student at Johns Hopkins after having returned to her native Saudi Arabia where she is a public health lecturer at a progressive university where men and women study together.

I had seen the start of her blossoming into an assertive young woman, a process that has continued over the last few years. Although she hasn’t reached her thirties yet she now comes across as very mature. And she is even more assertive. The coffee shop where we had our tea provided our drinks in paper cups. She walked up to the counter and demanded real cups, since we were consuming on the premises. I don’t think she would have done that when I first knew her. Although she didn’t believe me, I noticed how her English had also improved as she provided me with breathless updates about her life after BU and now in Baltimore. When I called her to say that I was nearing the airport and that she should wait on the curb she texted me back ‘what’s a curb?’ At least I taught her one more word.