Sylvia's Journal

I had brought back a set of three yoga videos for the arthritic mother of one of my colleagues. I had tried out one of the 20 minutes classes on the DVD that was called ‘Get Well.’ It advertised itself as gentle. I tried to follow the poses. It was very discouraging. The title should have been ‘Advanced Pretzel.’

This morning S reported that, before going to their various workplaces, her father, mother, sister and brother sat in front of their TV and did one of the sessions from the DVD called ‘Golden Years.’ They liked it. They resolved to do a yoga session every morning. I could just picture the whole family flexing and stretching while watching a lady dressed in a way that goes entirely against Afghan clothing orthodoxy. The image tickled me pink.

Then, at our regular senior management meeting my boss explained why he had not been able to come in yesterday. I learned how traditionally justice is served when a young man tries to rob a family. It was a fascinating tale of whole communities mobilizing to deal with the pain, shame and retribution when one of their own strays off the straight and narrow.

Although the police did eventually get involved, it is the community of elders that re-arranged matters, meted out punishment and compensated the aggrieved party. It was they who, in the end, asked the police to let the boy go. I marveled about the intricate network of social relationships, norms and actions. The young man’s family was from Peshawar in Pakistan. More than 10 elders (including grandma) traveled from Peshawar to apologize. Apparently even relatives in Iran were mobilized. They spent hours sitting and discussing, offering bags of rice and what not to make up for the crime.

Although the young man, when discovered breaking into my boss’ house in the middle of the night, was beaten by at least 10 people (I was horrified) – his treatment in the police cell, afterwards, was worse it seemed (now I was less horrified). It would explain why Afghans prefer to deal with crime and criminals as a matter between families that can be sorted out without the involvement of the state.

The whole affair kept a large group of people very busy for days, spending huge amounts of money on travel and appeasement, including putting up a house in Kabul as collateral in case of further misdeeds. Now all is well again and the families are pacified and reconciled. I don’t think this young man is ever going to break in again.

We in the US and Europe take a shortcut by delegating all this to the state. We lock up these young men (sometimes together with more seasoned criminals) and think that this will solve the problem of crime – which of course it doesn’t. The Afghan way appealed to me, as long as there are no guns involved. This can, of course, not be assumed, making the Afghan approach a little risky.

I spent the entire morning waiting in various lines and non lines outside and inside the Indian embassy to renew my visa. It is always a bit risky to stand near the Indian embassy with a recent history that includes at least two bombings. I hoped that Pakistanis preoccupation with internal matters of state and governance would leave the Indians alone for now.

One small bus that didn’t stop in the right place was immediately encircled by several uniformed men with cocked guns. Although the tension lasted only a few seconds it was amazing how quickly everyone standing around drew closer, rather than away from the vehicle. Curiosity appears to be a powerful competitor with common sense. A cavalcade of speeding unmarked vehicles minutes later explained why the embassy guards were so jittery. Minutes later all was quiet again and we were asked to enter the heavily guarded consular section of the embassy.

Still somewhat sleepy from jetlag I made it through my one hour Pashto class and learned, to my misplaced amazement that the word for husband in Pashto is ‘owner.’ I talk a lot about my husband these days because everyone wants to know where he is. In Pashto my owner is recuperating in the US.

At four o’clock in the morning I was wide awake and decided to go for a virtual run around the neighborhood – without leaving the house of course. I was back on the exercise machine and surprised myself on how far I was able to walk-run in 30 minutes. It helped that I was being read to by a great actor reading Melville’s Billy Budd.

I stayed until our house staff arrived so I could tell them in person about Axel’s non return. It is clear they are very fond of him as all were hugely disappointed. One of them, Rabbani, has asked me whether he can participate when I next talk with Axel and that he wants to ‘see him in a picture’ (I presume he means Skype video). We will do this over the weekend.

He showed off his progress with the hoola-hoop. He must have practiced a lot because he can now do it with very little movement of the hips – quite gracefully for a stocky little guy like him. Apparently everyone has practiced, even the cook; the oldest of the three guards has not mastered the skill – I suspect because he is rather self-conscious and is the type that doesn’t like to make a fool of himself in front of others.

I took my time to greet all my favorite colleagues. It was wonderful to see them again and the easing into the office routine was quite painless with only one meeting set up for the entire day.

This was at the ministry to further discuss how we will transition our knowledge and experience about management and leadership training to the general Directorate of Human Resources. A lot of work has been done over the last few years to draw up plans on how to improve human resources management but the general directorate has not been getting the attention (people, money) it deserves – some very brave and passionate people are working on changing this now. Like it or not, we are now also wrapped up in these efforts.

While checking my email I stumbled on this add – a fantasy Axel and I had when we first came here. Now I think not.

I am glad I had one more day to ease into my new life as a single person. I do miss Axel terribly, and felt quite lonely in this big house. However, the incessant dust storms would have made him miserable, and I am relieved we don’t have to deal with this challenge for him.

To get around the silence of being alone I have the TV on all the time, listening to the same BBC and Euro News stories ad nauseam. At least it feels as if there are other people around.

One of the office cars pulled in this morning with our emergency rations – just in case we are stuck in our guesthouses. I was there when that decision was made several weeks ago. Since then people thought about the content of this emergency food packet.

What was loaded onto our terrace fit into 3 boxes: 2 kg bags of dried fruit, a 3 kg can of California ‘cling’ peaches, several cans of fruit cocktail, several one liter juice boxes, 1 kg of dried milk powder, various packages of cookies, including one sugar free variety and three kinds of MRE (Meals Ready to Eat) that either fell of the truck or were donated by Douglas: Menu 20 (Spaghetti with Meat Sauce), Menu 24 (Chicken pulled in Buffalo Style Sauce) and one repackaged (it must have damaged its packaging during the fall) that includes caffeinated gum and a Honey BBQ Beef Sandwich.

Now that the stuff is here for real I wonder when I should start eating the cookies and dried fruit before they get stale. The MREs and the peaches and fruit cocktails will probably last forever.

In the afternoon I went to my Dari class and delivered the news that Axel was not coming back. Everyone is sad and sends their salaams. In the middle of my class I started to get very sleepy, just when my teacher explained the difference between transitive and intransitive verbs. I keep mixing them up – yet I should know better, having studied Latin during my youth.

Back home I spent the rest of the day transiting from my old computer to my two new ones: the new office one and my own NetBook. Armed with two hard drives I went back and forth, cleaning things out in the process, deleting files I don’t want to look at anymore and removing the duplicates from my music folder that came from endless copying over copies. I have separated the personal from the professional, an intention I have walked around with for a long time but unable to complete. I now have all the time of the world to do this sort of thing.

Tomorrow I will hand in the old laptop with the non functioning keyboard (teaspill) and the external keyboards, uncluttering my desk in the process. It is not much of an accomplishment but I feel hugely pleased with myself for completing this task.

I am back in Kabul where summer is in full swing. The dry mountain air instantly dehydrated me and the mineral-laden water that comes out of our faucets turned my skin into parchment.

It was very hard to come home to an empty house that has signs of Axel everywhere. I got a taste of what it might feel like when your best friend would be really gone, forever – all these traces. I had a cup of tea and a good cry and then Skype-chatted with my colleague and friend Jana in Kinshasa for nearly an hour.

When one’s best friend/life partner is not around, second best is long time girl friends and in the absence of that female friends. Now, with neither category A or B nearby I will have to rely on technology and/or expand my network of female friends here in Kabul to help me through the next four months.

I had alerted the guesthouse manager that Axel is not coming back and that I will continue my habit of eating only salads in the evening (green, fruit). Axel’s non return will particularly disappoint the cook and housekeeper. Since I usually leave (for work) before they arrive at our guesthouse and return after they leave there won’t be the Dari/English practice sessions with Axel and little contact with the people/person they are caring for. The cook will probably not be very happy with the minimalist cooking I have asked for, depriving him of Axel’s cooking lessons and the pride of cooking whole meals.

And so the last day of work came and went. I completed my handover notes, filled my waste basket with papers no longer useful or necessary, cleaned off my desk, shook hands and started looking towards the US.

Since I was last there three seasons have passed here (two and a half in the US). It feels like ages ago that I was home. Excitement was mounting until I watched the BBC and saw, to my great consternation, a gigantic ash cloud filmed out of a plane window. At first I hoped that I was looking at old footage and then realized it was from yesterday. I immediately had nightmare scenarios playing in my head: missing the graduation and all the fun because I would be stuck in Amsterdam, or worse, in Dubai.

For a change fee of a couple of hundred dollars I routed myself from Dubai to Boston via Atlanta rather than Amsterdam. It takes a landing in Europe out of the equation and if, for some reason the ash cloud drifts to Atlanta or Boston, I am at least on the right continent.

Since I will be travelling without a computer (I would have to drag a large keyboard along that doesn’t fit on the tray table) I will sign off now for as long as it takes me to get to a computer and internet connection again.

I was finally able to make it again to the wool place where the rug we saw started several months ago was ready for our viewing (and buying). We drove the long avenue through the Hazara part of town. Our Pashto driver said it was dangerous, pushing the bridge of his nose down to emphasize that his nose was very different from the ones we saw around us. We were in Gengis Khan land. There is bad blood and bad history between the Hazaras and the Pashtoons and people have along memories. I could tell he was not altogether at ease.

Of course the Hazaras are probably just as uneasy with the Pashtoon driver – it is a matter of who outnumbers who. Still this very big part of Kabul is no longer the scene of violence it was during Mujahideen time. We were thus in a safe part of Kabul when a suicide bomber detonated himself in the 400-bed military hospital far across town. I used to go to that hospital for physical therapy every Saturday during most of my first year here. Used to…might have been….Kabul is a big city.

I was warmly welcomed at the wool factory where this time some 15 women and girls were busy spinning and knitting and carpeting. I had brought juice packs and cookies and everyone was asked to come and sit in the knitting room to be with the foreign lady. I told them they could ask any question they wanted to ask me. But girls are taught not to be curious and so the questions were left in their heads. They mostly hid behind their veils and giggled, especially the young girls. This time there were no boys – they were in school. The girls had the afternoon shift, I discovered to my relief; although I watched child labor, it was not child labor at the expense of an education.

Two girls were busy on a large than life portrait rug of an American soldier by the name of Mr. Burton; bald-headed, the kind that pumps iron, drinks Red Bull and wears Ray Ban sunglasses. They had just finished his moustache. Weird.

The rug we had seen under construction some months ago was already spread out for me to view. I had not intended to buy it but when it became clear that a good chunk of the money would go to the families of the boys and girls who had worked on it and the remainder would buy another spinning wheel I quickly counted out my dollars and bought it.

For my Dari grammar class I was once again alone and learned the simple present perfect and the continuous present perfect allowing me to make more and more complex sentences, such as, I have forgotten my Dari since I haven’t spoken it for a few weeks. We made plans for my classes after my return in June and I was given a workbook that is used in 3rd grade here. My teacher expects me to keep on studying while on leave. All I could promise is that I would work in planes and while waiting for planes, but probably not much more than that.

I spent the morning reviewing performance reviews of the staff who are reporting to my staff. It is something that I take so serious that I never have the quiet time at work, so it’s saved up for the weekend. Writing good performance objectives, clarify expectations and then writing the assessment is very difficult if you want to do it right and very easy if you remove the staff development/mentoring aspect from it. It is a little thankless when you realize that for many people it is simply a compliance thing.

Friday is beauty parlor day. I have a masseuse who not only gives me great massages but also jewelry, semi-precious stones, hugs, food, and Starbucks coffee. The young Afghan girl gives me the relaxing massage while Lisa works the kinks out of my muscles – this is not relaxing and rather painful. And Pearl practiced her hair cutting skills on me because her job from last week was not quite complete.

I re-appeared from the odd salon (provider of armored vehicles, forklifts and other manly war things) with shorter hair, more limber and with shiny painted toenails, requirements, according to the team of beauticians, for seeing my family in a few days.

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In the afternoon I was invited to S’s house to check out the hybrid and grafted roses of which we had only seen the leafless and burlap-wrapped stumps on New Year’s day, 2 months ago. They had all broken out into spectacular blooms, some rose bushes instant multi-colored bouquets because of the grafting.

S and her sister were preparing a wonderful meal while I was sitting with her mom, this time no longer talking in broken German but rather in Dari. In the two months since we had celebrated new year with them my Dari had improved to the point where I could now manage the conversation without too much trouble. Occasionally she would slip into German but then I would quickly return to Dari. I tried a few of my new Pashto words on her which I then had to repeat to much amusement to the rest of the family. I felt very encouraged.

We moved to the outdoor veranda which was quickly covered by a carpet and cushions. While mom and I installed ourselves on the cushions, nursing our arthritic knees, the girls brought out a multi-course late lunch/early dinner (what the French would call a goûter). The tape recorder was brought out for some German songs from the 70s that mom had brought back. followed by Pashto songs that made it hard to sit still. For several hours we enjoyed conversation in several languages in the quiet afternoon warmth that settled over us after a nasty dust storm that had everyone gasping for air underneath their chadoors or destmals (checkered all purpose cloths worn by men in a variety of ways).

The very talkative kawk (fighter partridge) was let out of his cage and engaged in a rigorous exercise with papa whose feet he kept pecking at (he didn’t do any of this silly behavior with females). It was all quite entertaining.

Back home my friend Fazle the jeweler returned with the repaired earrings and rings and brought some more stuff, just in case I had money burning in my pocket. I called N in from guesthouse 0 who had indeed this burning sensation. Among the repaired treasures were the lapis earrings that Axel had bought for me on Chicken Street in Kabul in 1978. They had been broken at least a decade ago, as were the earrings he bought for me in Senegal at our 25th anniversary. They are all back in service just in time for our family gathering for Tessa’s graduation. Fazle donated a ring and is planning another surprise if he gets it to me in time. Three more nights, 2 more days till lift off!

Today some things got resolved, others got out in the open, and everything is a bit better as a result at least on the face of it. Deep down there may be some damage but I can only guess as it will never be disclosed to me. And so I enter the weekend with a lighter heart. Still, I am counting the days to boarding time (3).

On the Lobster Cove home front there is more excitement than here. Axel’s lungs appear to be OK and the allergy specialist is next to give his/her verdict – the problem seems to lie in the throat. I get that, being used to endless and very annoying throat clearing myself. Tessa is having her senior/graduation show’s opening and I was sad not to be able to heed her fb calls to come on over.

I had an extra long session at SOLA. Somehow the message that Axel was gone had not made its way to all his students. Now, one week after his departure I believe they all know.

I dropped about 10 pounds of books off and gave a lecture about borrowing library books and returning them, shamelessly comparing the non return of a library book with stealing. Everyone nodded that this was indeed a serious issue and not acceptable – at least not in theory. Immediately after our class F took to counting books – a rather basic library technique but better than none – and checking the list of people who had taken books out.

We read over 10 pages of Greg’s adventures in Baltiland. The girls are very competitive about how much they read out loud. Reading out loud is like getting candy, even more desirable than that. They sneak an extra paragraph when they think I am not watching by ignoring the end of a sentence or take a pass when it’s their turn and they consider the following paragraph is too short.

They are visibly disappointed when I say stop. And when they all have had a turn I can’t just let one other read until time is up – no, they all have to read about the same length of text (and they measure the way American kids measure Halloween treats) being fiercely protective of what they consider their right to read an equal number of lines as their sisters.

We had some fun discussions about cultural practices related to being invited into people’s home and the ignorance of foreigners. I told them that soon they will be the foreigner (huh?) and that they will be in for some surprises, introducing the very big word of cultural competence. I told them about my faux pas of accepting an invitation at the first go (here one has to decline until the invitation is extended a third time when it is real.)

The other side of this is the American habit of not repeating an invitation after it has been declined. F told us about her sister in Vermont who missed several opportunities at Ben and Jerry’s until she figured out that if she wanted an ice cream she’d better learn to say ‘yes’ right away.

I watched an Indian Shahrukh Khan movie that M bought for me because it was about never giving up, leadership, inspiration and change – themes that are rather relevant these days.

The story is about an Indian (field) hockey coach who got into trouble, as the captain of the Indian team because he lost a penalty shot that gave Pakistan the victory. His people spit him out. Redemption came many years of obscurity later when he molded a group of willful girls from all over India with fierce state loyalties into a high performing team.

It is a story about human frailties and redemption, rivalry, and more. I didn’t get the subtleties of the struggles towards redemption because there were no subtitles. If I understood things correctly the team finally came together when a bunch of annoying teenage boys harassed two of the girls in a McDonalds and thrashed both the boys and the place. The girls bonded even more when they were challenged by the Indian men’s team that first made fun of them until they realized the girls were for real which earned them both an applause and respect. In the end they became world champions, prying the victory loose from the 6 time Australian champions with a penalty shot – exactly the one that the coach missed all these years before. Circle closed.

The team theme resonated with me. It made me think about trying to be part of a team made up of people with such very different backgrounds and values. The shared values we claim represent only the outer layer. There are so many layers underneath that I can’t seem, or even if I see them, will never understand, no matter how much I try to immerse myself in this culture by learning some of its languages. Unlike the girls hockey team we don’t have the advantage of scoring goals together as a way of bonding, or, for that matter, beating up harassing boys.

I watched the menacing demonstrations in Takhar Province on the evening news. They are especially unsettling because when I came here the north was still considered safe for us foreigners but that has changed in the last 20 or so months. Anti American sentiment is strong. I read about international forces storming a clinic in one of the eastern provinces where Taliban, tribal feuds and IMF actions meld together to create one large explosive mixture.

Sometimes I do believe that the international forces have quotas to fill of bad guys to take out and they storm clinics and bedrooms alike. The US embassy promptly put out a bulletin for us Americans/foreigners to be on the alert because of all sorts of vague threats. We are exhorted to not to discuss our plans with strangers. As if we would.

It takes a lot to get me down but not very much to lift my spirits. That was done at dinner time after another trying morning by an article in today’s Afghanistan Times. An intrepid Italian with the help of the Aga Khan Foundation and New Zealand tax dollars is doing something much more challenging than what I am trying to do. If I sometimes feel I am swimming upstream, he’s certainly swimming upstream of something equivalent to the wild Mississippi River by coaxing Afghan women from rural Bamiyan to learn to ski.

The quotes in the article are priceless. “Women skiing? I’m against it if they do it without the burqa,” according to one gentleman fingering his prayer beads. One of the young women (they are all in their 20s and 30s) who clearly enjoyed the new experience said, “It is the first time I do something for myself.” Apparently the women had to put up with snide remarks from male onlookers – but that is nothing new. I remember an article about a young female automobilist in Herat whose car was full of dents from male drivers intentionally hitting her car – a variation on snide remarks.

A 16 year old had come to the conclusion that, never mind the burqa (“it would be impossible to see the piste”) even a veil was impractical and unnecessary. But Mullah Said did not entirely agree with the latter proposition, “If the woman is properly covered from head to toe, with a scarf, she does not need the burqa…”

Reading this I was imagining women with their blue burqas fluttering in the wind elegantly zigzagging down a mountain slope. I ought to get that burqa before I leave Afghanistan and, one day back in the US, when no one is looking, see what it is like to ski with a burqa. Ha!

The article made me smile and realize that I am not alone in my efforts of trying to free women from oppressive attitudes and practices although it certainly feels that way sometimes. S and M told me today that they are praying for me. That was very sweet, since I think they are the ones I need to pray for.