It is summer, really summer; the kind of timeless summer weather with swimming in a not too cold sea, rowing, kayaking (all possible with a less than perfect rotator cuff – mine, not Axel’s), seafood, picnics sitting with our legs dangling over the large granite blocks that make up one of many picturesque new England harbors; and my sister visiting with her husband. And vacation.
Last year at this time I had returned to Kabul without Axel. Kabul was painfully in our conscience this weekend with the attack on the Spooghmay resort on lake Qargha. We had spent some time there on a quiet Friday during Ramazan 2010, we the only ones wanting a meal. I imagined the families spending a nice day by the water – there aren’t all that many nice places to go to, near to Kabul. The fathers were killed first, the panic, I can just imagine. The perpetrators said they were targeting the Kabul elite, with elite being equated with depraved. Cambodia chased away its elite and is still paying the price for it. I am intensely sad; and worried for our brave Afghan girls coming to study here. Will they be marked upon their return? All this makes the question whether it is good for the Americans to withdraw a very complicated proposition.
Sylvia's Journal 
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