, Subject: Afghan Dispatch No.1
Monday, April 26 2004
Salam from Kabul!
After 37 hours, 3 continents and 4 continents I have arrived, at last, in the Afghan capital. Highlights of the transit included a jog in London's Regents Park, which was abloom with tulips and flowering trees; Dubai Airport's health club, which offers the best $7 shower a stinky traveler could hope for; and Ariana Airlines, which despite the duct tape on the aft left door and persistent wheezing sound in the cabin deposited me safely in this ancient city. The modern journey's length gives one new appreciation for the feats of Alexander the Great, who swept through more than 2,300 years ago, without the benefit of Ariana, let alone the $7 shower.
My work with the Institute for War and Peace Reporting (www.iwpr.net) will begin in earnest next week; for the next few days I and several other newly arrived colleagues will be dealing with the basics--finding our housing, getting phones, memorizing the word for "bathroom" and learning which side of the landmine warning flags to walk on. Hopefully the jet lag will have worn off by the time we get to the landmine lesson.
Monday's itinerary included a grand tour of Kabul, which would be more aptly named Tan, because that's the color of everything--the dusty streets, the brick walls made from the same dust, the men's tunic-and-pants ensembles, the surrounding hills, the overcast sky, the smoke from the kebab stands, the exhaust from the ancient buses squeezing down the bumpy streets. The only exceptions seem to be the yellow of the taxis, the green of the trees (of which there are more than one might expect) and the blue of the women's burkas (of which are more than one would hope).
Luckily the vibe of the city does not match its color--this place is mad with activity. From cranes erecting 10-story apartment buildings to turbaned men hauling wheelbarrows of bricks, Kabul is in the midst of a building boom. Commerce is alive and well: Clap-trap shipping containers house everything from pots-and-pans dealers to auto mechanics, and wooden-wheeled carts are laden with watermelons, tomatoes, cucumbers and green onions. On the queerly named Chicken Street, one can buy carpets, fur coats, and lapis lazuli chessboards--though no chickens. On the adjoining Flower Street, there are flowers for sale, plus everything from strawberry soy milk to Nutella and--thank you, globalization--Diet Coke.
On each corner are the jarring juxtapositions increasingly encountered by 21st century travelers to the Third World. Step out of the Internet cafe, and a man pulling a massive wooden cart heaves by you. Drive past the DHL office and narrowly avoid running over a landmine victim who is swinging his way down the street using wooden blocks in each hand. Catch sight of a massive billboard for cell phones then notice, in its shadow, a woman filling a bucket with water from a community pump.
Presidential elections are coming in September, but the posters plastered all over town depict not incumbent Hamid Karzai nor his rivals but Ahmed Shah Massoud, the late commander of the Northern Alliance assassinated by Al Qaeda operatives just two days before Sept. 11, 2001. Though locals say the number of Massoud portraits has dropped, even at the airport his 3-story high visage is 50% larger than a similar one of Karzai. It is too early for me to judge whether this is a natural outpouring for a revered figure, or a symptom of an unhealthy focus on the past to the detriment of the future.
And now, a useless phrase from my Dari dictionary:
This from the "at the hairdresser's: section: Metarsam shomaa taas nashawed
Which means: I'm afraid you are getting bald.
Please write!
Jules
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Subject: Afghan Dispatch No. 2
Fri, 21 May 2004
Dear Friends,
Thanks to all who have written in the last couple weeks. I hope everyone is well! This dispatch is slightly overdue because I have been enduring the rather elaborate intestinal hazing ritual known as eating in Kabul. After several days spent more horizontal than vertical, I'm feeling healthy again. So, here's what's new at 35 degrees north, 69 degrees east:
Work Life
Lest anyone think I'm spending my days swatting flies and drinking chai--activities that seem to pass for productivity in a number of Afghan offices--let me offer an update on the project that brought me here. The group I'm with, the Institute for War and Peace Reporting, is in the process of launching a "daily news training program" with 20 reporters in five cities, plus about 10 editors and 20 support staff. The idea is to simulate the work of a news agency such as Associated Press, generating daily news stories by Afghans, for Afghans, and distributed to radio, TV and print outlets nationwide. Hopefully, the program will eventually morph into a real news agency--if some obstinate bureaucrats at the sclerotic Information Ministry don't quash the idea.
The reporters come from a wide range of backgrounds--some have worked for the state-run news agency for 20 years; others are recent high school graduates. We ran all of them through a two-week "basic skills" program, then decided that probably another two weeks of Journalism 101 wouldn't kill any of them. Next week, we begin more specialized training on broad subject areas--how to cover business, the government, security issues, Islam, etc. I will lead two days of classes on how to cover education, health, culture, sports, the environment and women's issues. But my main role for the next few weeks will be heading up 10 days of copy-editor training and 10 days of assignment-editor training; helping compile a style guide; and helping set up the in-house news library and news library intranet page. Did I mention that all this is supposed to be done by mid-July?
It's an exciting project on an ambitious--some might say insane--timetable. The job is made even tougher by the need to work almost constantly through interpreters, which is very draining. On top of that, there are some interesting cultural issues involved--for instance, some of the female reporters' families object to them doing "man on the street" interviews, lest the women be perceived as propositioning strangers. Still, without exception, I have found the Afghans in the program to be very bright and phenomenally enthusiastic. Their attitude--and the overall hunger for information here--has reminded this jaded American that journalism done right does serve a real need.
Kabul Life
Kabul life is a delight for four of the five senses, with olfaction being the major exception. Between the open sewers, auto exhaust, dust storms and animal heads baking in the sun in front of the butcher shops, a good nose is a bad thing to have in this city. After awhile, though, you begin to tune out the odors and allow your other perceptions to become more keen.
My days no longer begin with the beeping of an alarm clock, because the sounds of the city wake me. Kabul starts stirring at about 4 a.m. as the Islamic call to prayer cascades from the neighborhood mosque's loudspeakers. Next comes the clip-clop of horses and mules pulling carts of produce, then bicycle bells, rooster calls, barking dogs, lurching buses, honking taxis and the whistles of the perpetually exasperated traffic cops.
My work is about a mile from my home, and the 20 minute walk is never boring. By 8 a.m. the sidewalk kebab grillers already have their meats on the fires and are fanning the coals. Brigades of boys are busy washing cars by the side of a block-square city park. Old men are pulling carts of rhubarb, papayas and watermelons down the street. Chickens in pens are squawking. Amputees are making their way through traffic on hand-powered oversize tricycles, begging for handouts at taxis ferrying foreigners. Young hawkers of calendars, postcards and car air-fresheners target the same cars.
Kabul is rich with humorous intersections of the ancient and the modern. The other day I was sitting in a place called the Blue Palace Internet Cafe, and as I stared out the azure-tinted front window, a herd of about 30 fat-butted sheep happened down the sidewalk, driven by a wizened man in a turban. Last week, I was in a tailoring shop and the proprietor inquired about my strange "necklace." I told him that my "amulet" was a computer memory stick, worn on a lanyard. The frown on his face informed me that my explanation--or perhaps my taste in "jewelry"--was deeply unsatisfying to him.
As for the palate, Afghan cuisine has its charms--fresh bread and produce on every road, coconut-peddlers with push carts, and popcorn men who charge 10 cents for a piping hot bag. And when it comes to making eggplant taste good, Afghanistan is light years ahead of the United States.
Still, I've been suffering a little bit of food paranoia, for every meal seems to present so many potential hazards: What is this crusty stuff on the glass I've been drinking out of? Did I really see the black-toothed guard at my guest house eat directly out of the communal bowl of yogurt? How many flies can land on a kebab before it's guaranteed to make you sick? When such questions get to be too daunting, we Westerners head for one of the city's numerous restaurants serving international fare--Thai, Italian, German, Iranian, Indian, Chinese. Some are foreigners-only joints, such as one with the annoying name of "Red, Hot and Sizzling," where I attended a Cinco de Mayo party, of all things. Its menu features a $25 USDA prime steak, $6 milkshakes, cheese grits, nachos and margaritas--not to mention pork chops and BLTs.
Home Life
My first three weeks in Afghanistan were rather nomadic, as I moved four times. Now I am ensconced at the Blue Moon Guest House, which is more like a theater of the absurd than a bed-and-breakfast. Consider the motley cast of characters:
Debbie: Heavy-set, vivacious, bleach-blonde hairdresser from Michigan who runs a beauty school for Afghan women. Divorced three times, she married Hajji Sher last fall. Speaks about 50 words of Dari. Age 42.
Hajji Sher: Rowdy ethnic Uzbek Afghan businessman who looks like Jackie Chan, likes hashish and Heinekens, and operates a well-drilling company and a bevy of more shady businesses. Fought with the warlord Abdul Rashid Dostum in northern Afghanistan. Married to Debbie, and simultaneously to his first wife in Saudi Arabia, with whom he has seven children. Speaks about 150 words of English. Age 31. Runs the guest house along with Debbie.
Ros Mohammed: Happy-faced guy from Turkemenistan who worked on Hajji Sher's drilling projects until he was captured by Taliban fighters last fall and spent four months in a cave along with two Turkish engineers. Now employed as the guest house chowkidar (half errand boy, half doorman), he speaks no English and has a curious inability to communicate cross-culturally via gestures. Age unknown.
David: Idealistic guest house tenant and grad student from Idaho who has been in Afghanistan five months, doing research on human rights and other topics and writing reports for various NGOs.
Philippe: David's hippie acquaintance who appears to have been perpetually stoned for the last 6 years. Calls himself a student of Islam and starts dinner-table conversations with remarks such as: I don't see what the problem is with women's rights in Afghanistan. Visits the guest house far too frequently.
Sima: A delightful Afghan-American hairdresser from Virginia who has come to help run the beauty school.
Sima's mom: A sage 70-year-old Afghan woman who spends about 23 hours a day sitting in Sima's room.
Rob: My cantankerous colleague from IWPR, he's 49 and survives on coffee and nicotine. Lives in Portland.
Halima: My very smart, super nice and super helpful Afghan-American colleague from IWPR. Age 26, lives in San Jose.
Wazir: Whiny tan puppy who sleeps in a dishpan in the garden.
As you can imagine, there's nary a dull moment in the house. Much hilarity is inspired by the language gap between Debbie and Hajji Sher: One day, Sher was shouting that he was "very very hungry!" Debbie kept telling him to eat. Later it was determined that Sher was trying to say he was very very angry. Other times, Debbie will just regale visitors with tales from her bizarre life. My favorite story was about how she lived in a tent on the beach in the Bahamas for 6 months with her two kids, tried to cook sea-turtle soup, and made a small fortune by importing Twinkies from Florida and selling them out of the back of an aged Mini Cooper.
In Conclusion
Now that I've prattled on way too long about minutiae here, I'm renewing my plea for emails from all of you. Let me know what's interesting in your corner of the globe. And if you want me to attempt to send you a postcard, please let me know your address. Together, we just might double the work load of my local post office.
And now, another useless phrase from my Dari dictionary:
This from the "Everyday Expressions" section:
Iin gau pir ast, az yak juaan bedeh.
Which means: This cow is old, give from young one.
Please write!
Jules
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Subject: Afghan Dispatch No. 3
Dear Friends,
Thanks again to all who have written; the kind notes and updates from your side of the globe have been a delight. Emboldened by the positive response to my last mass mailing, I herewith offer Afghan Dispatch No. 3.
Random Events: The Kabul 10K
Despite the fact that my exercise regimen has gone to hell since I arrived in Afghanistan, I and my colleagues/housemates Rob and Nick decided to haul our butts over to Kabul University last Friday morning for the Kabul 10K "Run for Peace." I still have no clue about which warring parties I was aiming to reconcile through my participation in a mass jog, but that was really beside the point. All I knew was it was a chance for me--a woman--to exercise in public AND get a T-shirt!
I would say I placed in the top 25 women. That's because there were only about 25 women, all but 1 or 2 of whom were foreigners. We gals--and about 50 small Afghan children--ran a course apart from the 250 or so male participants. The organizers encouraged female entrants to dress "modestly," so some of us were running in 80-degree weather in headscarves, long tunics and pants. Others, though, apparently didn't get the message--or didn't care--and showed up in spandex, to the delight of many of the men along the route. I wore sweatpants, an oversize long-sleeve T-shirt and a baseball hat, yet somehow still managed to attract a healthy number of catcalls. The experience made me wonder how American men have been containing themselves around me for the last 20 years!
Kabul has an elevation similar to Denver's, and its air is laden with dust, diesel exhaust, and god knows what other disgusting particulates. Consequently my lungs were burning for the first 10 minutes. After that, I got used to the pain, or maybe I just became distracted by the sights along the route...
First we passed a male dormitory, whose inhabitants pressed themselves against the windows like flies, gawking, whistling and cheering. Next came a construction zone, where we tiptoed over metal wires and rebar. Then we leaped across a sewage ditch (lovely smell) and ran into a wooded part of the campus where we were briefly joined in a trot by four goats. After the livestock encounter, we headed into an open field where we were met by more hoots and hollers from women as well as men.
Cutting through some trees on a dirt path, we made our way thru a junkyard of bus skeletons filled with charred chairs; the university is in the part of Kabul most heavily damaged during the mujahideen fighting of early 1990s. We traipsed by many 70s-era campus buildings, then made our way back to the open field, which afforded a breathtaking view of all the mountains surrounding the city--in every direction you looked, there was a peak.
Most of the Afghan kids finished far ahead of me, having taking advantage of multiple opportunities for shortcuts. Still, I completed the course in under an hour--though I crossed the finish line from the wrong direction due to poor signage along the route. Rob and Nick finished in finer form (i.e. the right direction). Along the route a spectator handed Rob a hard-boiled egg. I decided it was the Afghan equivalent of a Power Bar.
Work Life
My work training Afghan journalists with the Institute for War and Peace Reporting continues to offer both challenges and rewards. Some days are very gratifying: It was a great feeling last week when I sent reporter out to do a story and he came back with an article that had a decent lead and enough substance to make it printable. The story was about a new program to inspect Kabul's restaurants and butchers for sanitary problems--an initiative that, in my opinion, is long overdue! I have also been spending some quality time with editors. My favorite recent question from them: How much of a reporter's story should an editor rewrite--80% or 90%?
Other days, though, are rough. Using computers is a new experience for many of our writers, and several reporters cried when I assigned them last week to type their stories instead of writing them longhand. Meanwhile, I discovered that four of the five copy editors for our bilingual (Dari and Pashtu) operation are only competent in one language. To make matters worse, I also learned that there is no computer "spell check" in either language. Bill Gates, are you listening out there?
Simultaneous to all this, our organization ran out of cash when the Afghan National Bank put a hold on $1 million that was recently transferred into our account. So payday came 10 days late--a serious hardship for many of our trainees, who are supporting families of 10 or more on a few hundred dollars a month. In the interim, our head computer technician, our transportation coordinator and our security manager were fired for incompetence and skimming several thousand bucks from the coffers. It is frustrating, on a daily basis, to see good intentions sacrificed on the altar of NGO organizational chaos. Still, I continue to feel that this project will succeed thanks to the sheer will of the Afghans involved--if the Americans don't screw things up too much in the interim.
Home Life
The drama at Blue Moon Guest House continues. This month's storyline centers on the arrival of Hajji Sher's father from Saudi Arabia on an unexpected visit. Papa Sher (I don't know his real name, but that's what we foreigners call him) is NOT aware that his son has taken Debbie, the plump blond hairdresser from Michigan, as his second wife. Nor would it be a good thing if he found out. Consequently there have been several incidents straight out of "Three's Company" where all of us in the house are conspiring to keep Papa Sher confused about who's sleeping with whom.
At first, we thought we'd pretend that Debbie was married to my co-worker Rob. But then Debbie's 19-year-old son Zach came to Afghanistan and started sleeping in a room with Debbie. Hajji Sher usually slept in Papa Sher's room, but sometimes he would stay with Debbie and tell his father he was staying in Rob's room. Then Zach and Papa Sher bonded over Nintendo kickboxing, and the cook told Papa Sher that Debbie's husband was in America. I'm not sure what Papa Sher thinks at this point. Either he has figured it all out and is staying quiet, or is really really befuddled. He left for Saudi on Sunday. In celebration, Hajji Sher slaughtered a sheep and held a big kebab cookout in our garden.
Buddhas and Beautiful Lakes
This weekend I traveled to Bamiyan and Band-i-Amir, 110 miles west of Kabul, with my co-workers Rob, Nick and Halima. Though there have been several disturbing incidents lately of foreigners being killed in Afghanistan, the Bamiyan area remains very calm and we were greeted warmly by everyone from the provincial governor down to a toddler girl dressed in a brightly colored dress and white headscarf.
Bamiyan was home to the colossal Buddhas that were destroyed by the Taliban in early 2001. It is populated mainly by the Hazara ethnic group, who have Chinese-like features and are said to be descended from the hordes who invaded Afghanistan with Genghis Khan. Hazaras have long been second-class citizens in Afghanistan, but as Shiite Muslims they suffered particularly severe persecution under the Taliban, a Sunni movement. The town's entire bazaar was destroyed during the years of fighting with the Taliban and only now is being revived.
Though Bamiyan's Buddhas are gone, the niches where they once towered remain, and even today it is possible to sense the power these massive images projected over the valley for more than 1,500 years. Now their voids stand as complementary testaments to man's deep capacity for both creativity and stupidity.
Fortunately, the Taliban did not lay a hand on Band-i-Amir, a series of five, large, deep sapphire blue lakes set into a landscape of towering, barren sandstone cliffs and rolling hills dappled with desert vegetation. When you first catch a glimpse of these lakes, you are left speechless at their beauty. Then you spend the rest of the day talking about how stunningly beautiful they are. As Nancy Dupree said in her classic 1976 travel guide to Afghanistan, "To describe the scene more fully would be to rob the uninitiated of the wonder and amazement it produces on all who gaze upon it--be it for the first time, or the 10th."
We spent the day puttering around the waters in a pedal-boat shaped like a swan; taking short dips in the clear, icy water; marveling at the yellow fish that arose from the depths; exploring a small shrine on the shore; and picnicking in a tent. As I drank in the shimmering of the water under the cloudless sky, the hollow feeling left by my visit to the devastated Buddha cliffs the day before receded like a tide, and the world seemed right again.
In Conclusion
Now that I've prattled on way too long about minutiae here, I'm renewing my plea for emails from all of you. Let me know what's interesting in your corner of the globe. And if you want me to attempt to send you a postcard, please let me know your address. Believe me, the guys at my local post office are dying for some business.
And now, another useless phrase from my Dari dictionary:
This from the "adjectives" section:
Rahim madhosh ast, magar Ahmad mast ast.
Which means: Rahim is full drunk, but Ahmad is madly drunk.
Did I mention that Afghanistan is an officially "dry" country?
Please write!
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Subject: Afghan Dispatch No. 44
Dear Friends,
Well, I'm beginning this dispatch on July 4 here in Kabul and I have just returned from a little Independence Day cookout. It was your typical hot dogs-and-apple pie, potato salad-and-beer, eight guards-with-Kalashnikovs celebration. Like most foreigner get-togethers I've attended here, it was dominated by overpaid American consultants whose idea of happy hour conversation is discussing which amoeba they've had in their intestines lately. Of course, when I'm back in L.A. and stuck at some vapid Hollywood event, I'll probably be longing for that certain je ne sais qua of Kabul's social scene.... Anyhow, here's what's new in the Afghan capital.
Work Life
In actuality, my social life here has been rather quiet for the last three to four weeks as work has become increasingly intense. Today, July 11, the group I am working with (the Institute for War and Peace Reporting) debuted its Dari/Pashtu news service known as Pajhwak, which means Echo. Because the service still has not received official sanction from the government, the 11th marked a "soft launch" with distribution limited to about 40 radio stations.
Nevertheless, the reporters and editors worked hard to prepare for the day. Reporters have been assigned beats and have been covering everything from a bakery strike to bombings in Jalalabad and beheadings down south. Then there's been the suspense over just when the elections are going to be held, and abundant rumors about rings of kidnappers swiping kids off every street corner. It's wonderful to see the staff working as well as it is--men with 20 years of experience as "journalists" at the state news agency are toiling alongside girls fresh out of high school. If there is tension among the Tajiks, Pashtuns and Hazaras in our office, it is not apparent to me.
Like in any news organization, meeting deadlines has been a big challenge, as has training the staff on computers. Then there are the issues that are unique to the Afghan environment, such as a significant staff brouhaha because the font of the Pashtu words on the office door signs was slightly smaller than the Dari font. There was also a major debate over whether to have a "curtain" at our staff party to separate the men from the women. In the end, we had one, but the women were on the men's side for 95% of the time, and retreated to their own side only to dance. Although the whole notion of the curtain was an affront to my American sensibilities, I soon realized I was missing the forest for the trees: Three years ago, there would have been no women at an office, let alone a party, music or dancing. I took great heart in the fact that one gal got up and read a poem and another sang a duet with a man. These are the sounds of progress--maybe not as fast or as far as I'd like, but substantial nonetheless.
Home Life
The drama at the Blue Moon Guest House shows no sign of letting up. Our current episode has several plot lines, including the apparently impending marriage of Zach (hairdresser Debbie's stoner 19-year-old son) to an Afghan girl who speaks no English; the discovery that the 44-year-old guest house manager's terribly cute 16-year-old "foster daughter" is in fact a prostitute and is servicing him; and a huge fight over fans and cable TV that ended in death threats and my co-worker Rob's decision to move out.
Which is not to say that life at the house isn't fun. In fact, it is terribly entertaining. We've had some late-night dinners in the garden, complete with trance music and a fine Shiraz courtesy of the PX, topped off with a highly improvised but surprisingly good strawberry-cherry cream cake. Just when things start to seem normal, though, another bizarre episode is waiting around the corner. This morning I came downstairs and Sher, Debbie's Afghan husband, was discussing what to cook. "Horse penis sand-u-ee-cheee. Berry, berry good for breakfast! You try?" he asked me in his best pidgin English. Slowly, I moved toward the cupboard, hoping that no one had eaten the last of my stale Coco Krispies. I never knew a box of cereal could inspire such elation.
Travels
A few weeks ago, I had the chance to visit Mazar-i-Sharif, the main city in northern Afghanistan. The key differences between Mazar and Kabul are thus: Mazar has a greater horse-to-donkey ratio; less pavement; smaller buildings; better fruit; and a fabulous blue mosque. Despite being significantly north of Kabul, it's much hotter (110-115 F) because it's at a lower elevation.
While I was in the area, I visited Balkh, a city with a prodigious antiquity as the base of Alexander the Great, a preaching point for Zoroaster, and a center of Buddhist learning. Later it became an Islamic spiritual center after the introduction of Islam to Afghanistan in the 9th century. Its fall came in 1220 at the hands of Genghis Khan, and today it remains a shadow of its former self. Still there are some historic sites, including the grounds of the old city, whose massive walls still stand and where you can easily find old pottery shards; a 15th-century blue-tiled shrine; the tomb of a famous poetess; and what remains of the earliest known mosque in Afghanistan, dating from the early 800s. There are also significant Buddhist remains, although no one seems the least bit interested in preserving these.
Nearby is Qala-i-Jhangi, a massive prison/fortress that was the site of one of the most famous episodes of the U.S. war against the Taliban. This is the place where "American Talib" John Walker Lindh was found after a 6-day revolt by Al Qaeda/Taliban detainees. During the siege, U.S. CIA operative Mike Spann was killed. The episode ended after U.S. forces and their Afghan allies flooded the basement area where the rebellious prisoners were holed up, killing about 100 people. Today, that part of the complex is abandoned and littered with ghosts, munitions both live and spent, and twisted hulks of military vehicles. Two rows of tall, dead trees, shorn of their branches and bark, stand sentry at the entrance. What terrible secrets that wood must hold.
Random Events
Last weekend, I went golfing at the Kabul "Gulf" Club (as the sign proudly announces) northwest of town. It can generously be described as a challenging, desert-style course of 9 holes. How many people can say their golf pro used to be a mujahed?
The greens are brown--a mixture of sand and oil that is prone to footprints. The "pro shop" is housed in a rusty orange shipping container that's been hit by some kind of munition. No golf carts are yet available, but there is the luxurious necessity of two caddies--one to carry your clubs over the rough terrain and a second "fore" caddy to watch where your ball lands--it's impossible to see the white sphere against the tan scrub that makes up the course (all the irrigation piping has been looted). Don't mind the guards with automatic weapons and knockoff green "Giorgio Armani" jumpsuits who hang out at hole #3.
A guided tour of the burned-out clubhouse gives a player a sense of the glory days of the '70s--the place had men's and women's locker rooms with showers, a table tennis parlor and a bar. Head up the spiral staircase and you find a kitchen and dining room with a balcony overlooking a large reservoir. Today the place reeks of urine and has no windows or doors, but when the pro's around you can sit for a spell on the veranda in a plastic lawn chair, drink a warm Pepsi and partake in one of the most common pastimes in Afghanistan: trying to envision what used to be.
In Conclusion
Well, those are some of the highlights. I hope everyone is well. I've got just a few weeks left here, so if there's anything anyone out there really wants from Kabul, speak now or never.
And now, it's time for another very useful phrase from my Dari phrasebook:
Kodaam-yak raa bisyaar-tar dost daared? Man zan-e jawan raa bisyaar dost daaram.
Which means:
Which of your wives do you like better? I like the younger one more.
Discouragingly, some things are the same, no matter where on earth you go!
Yours in Kabul,
J
