back in kabul

Yesterday morning at 8:40, I climbed into the Focus Hilux, driven by Akhtar. Here are my favorite Focus drivers, in order of preference:

Karimbaksh
Hakim
Haji Ahmad
Nabi
(Blank)
(Blank)
(Blank)
(Blank)
Akhtar.

The guy drove like a freaking pansy, I couldn't even count how many beat-up Corollas passed us or how many times we got stuck behind a truck doing 30 kph because he wouldn't pass. Then he kept asking if it was okay to get lunch, to which my thought was, No, we're already going to be late, plus there's no way in hell I'm eating from some roadside restaurant. My bowels have done quite well on this trip despite earlier warnings to the contrary and I had no desire to see that change. Finally, I just said okay. Turns out that meant a stop at a place where you sit down and they bring you food, not the carry-out I was expecting. This pissed me off. Then the guy who was sweeping up after people (eating took place on a raised concrete ledge covered by a long carpet, which was covered by a plastic tablecloth) kept trying to ask me what I liked to eat. I kept saying, Sure I like rice but I don't want to eat anything right now. The guy just kept asking and finally I snapped at him and he stopped. In case it's not obvious, I was not in a good mood.

Had I not been in a hurry to get back to Kabul and had we not already been running late, the drive would have been quite nice. And actually, all complaining aside, it was okay. The road, as I mentioned before, is very good by Afghan standards. We didn't have to wait at all to go through the Salang. The scenery is interesting on the Pul-i-Khumri side of the mountains and actually pretty on the Kabul side.

Of course, once we got to Kabul, the final strike against Akhtar: He got lost and couldn't find the office. Bah. Anyway, had to push my meeting at AKF back, which turned out to be fine. We got to the office around 3, instead of 1:30. Beth and I did some work on the M&E stuff, they brought me a pizza, which I surprisingly ate in its entirety, I went to AKF, I came back, I did some more work, I went back to the guesthouse, I went out for dinner and a beer with Beth and Noor at the Lebanese place, I went home, I fell asleep.

Salman Rushdie, in his Moth piece about going to the civil war in Nicaragua, says a wonderful thing. He describes how this particular woman was the most hated person in the country, despite the fact that she hadn't yet done the thing for which she most deserved to be hated. He says that proves that Nicaraguans have "a very elastic sense of time." Something about that turn of phrase delights me.

Now I'm back in the office, working on M&E stuff and catching up on emails. Tomorrow's the weekend I think Tameeza mentioned that she wanted to do brunch at the Serena as soon as she and Kelly get back from Pul-i-Khumri.

One last thing, very sad, which has been gnawing at me. Two days ago a suicide bomber blew himself up outside the governor's compound in Charikar, the capital of Parwan. I drove through Charikar yesterday and, actually, that's where we stopped for lunch. The suicide bomber was trying to kill the governor and some of his guards. Instead, he killed a little girl and a woman who were nearby. And himself, of course. People die violently all the time in this country. ISAF soldiers have killed plenty of civilians, mostly unintentionally but sometimes carelessly and sometimes, I'm sure, on purpose. Fuck anyone who does that. In particular, fuck the guy who, two days ago, decided that the best way he could fight for his cause was to kill a schoolgirl and a woman who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time in a po-dunk provincial capital. It almost goes without saying that none of the people the guy tried to kill actually died. There's nothing like proximity to an event to drive the point home that war fucking blows and that killing civilians blows most of all.

On that cheerful note, I should get back to work.