nine pm

I picked Taksim as the neighborhood to stay on the recommendation of my friend Erol, who said it's the happening neighborhood for young people. That is no doubt the case, but I haven't met anyone yet -- the hostel is not exactly a happening spot and I didn't go out of my way to talk to English speakers I overheard throughout the day -- and frankly, after undersleeping last night and nine hours of walking around today, I'm just going to pack it in.

What a day, though. What a city! Istanbul lives up to the hype. I walked down Istiklal Caddasi (street) to the Bosphorus and then crossed the bridge. I knew from the map the guy at the hostel gave me, and from talking to Erol and others, that the main sights are all pretty close together. So I just picked the first big, old, mosque-looking building I saw and walked in. Turned out to be the New Mosque (ca. 1650). Gorgeous, lesser-known than its sibling the Blue Mosque. But I'm getting ahead of myself. I took my shoes off and walked into the main hall of the New Mosque. It's gorgeous. This became a theme.

After a few minutes gaping, I walked back out into the sunlight and across a small courtyard to the Spice Bazaar. Wandered around, checking out the spice wholesalers and all the other shops hawking their wares. It's crowded and close but not overwhelming at all. Not that I'm easily overwhelmed by crowds or chaos, I guess, but it felt orderly somehow. I wandered out and then walked around trying to find my next destination. This turned out to be the Topkapi Palace museum. Twenty bucks later and I was again agape, exploring the huge grounds, many buildings, and staggering objets d'art that the Topkapi offers. Some of the stuff is incredibly cool. They've got 500-year-old caftans worn by Ottoman sultans, jewel-encrusted cups and scabbards and tons else, ebony thrones with mother-of-pearl inlay, gifts from faraway rulers like the Chinese and Russians. And then a whole wing dedicated to relics and other religious objects: the sword of King David (yes, that King David), Abraham's sauce pan (yes, that Abraham), Moses's staff (you get the idea), the Prophet's swords and bow, and on and on! Like all relics the provenance is a little dubious, but they make no allowances of that kind in the displays. David's sword is dated as ca. 10th century BC. Abraham's sauce pan as ca. 19th century BC. They've also got old pieces of the Kaaba in there.

Objet'd out, I made my over to the highlight of the Topkapi: the harem. Turns out this refers not just to the concubines who kept the sultan happy and bore him children, but to the whole private residence of the sultan and his retinue: concubines, his mother, his sons, his eunuchs watching over everything. The architecture and decoration in this part are just unreal. There was a lot of gasping.

After that I visited the big brother of the New Mosque, the Blue Mosque. It's similar just bigger and more spectacular. The Hagia Sophia is closed on Mondays so I went to the Grand Bazaar. It is Borgesian in its apparent infinitude. There are points inside where it doesn't seem to end, but rather to repeat in all directions like a fractal. I successfully avoided buying anything that I don't need, although I did stop for tea at a cafe with wifi, so I could check to see whether my colleague Kishwar had written back about dinner. He had not. I moved on.

More wandering took me to a little cafe, where I sat outside and drank some hot spiced red wine. Finally I retraced my steps, more or less, and ended up back on Istiklal. Had dinner at a restaurant that TripAdvisor recommended, called Faros. It was good but extremely generic: convert the prices to USD and you could plop the whole thing down in any decent-sized city in the US and it would not be out of place. I had tagliatelle with chicken and mushrooms and rocket salad with the largest sheets of parmesan I've ever seen tented over the top and drizzled with balsamic vinegar. And a beer. Like I said, tasty but unexceptional.

And now I'm back in the hostel, it's 9:20 PM, and I think I'm going to watch an episode of Sherlock or some other movie and call it an evening. I'll head to the airport around 10 tomorrow morning and be back in DC by dinnertime. What a trip!

is-tan-bul

Arrived safe and sound at the Green House Hostel after a longish taksi ride. Istanbul is huge. Driving into it from the airport is like a cross between San Francisco, New York, and Karachi, but really comparisons fail. Just grabbed some breakfast and my first Turkish Turkish coffee, picked up a map, and in a second I'm going to put my shoes on and head out for the Hagia/Haya/Aya Sophia/Sofia, Blue Mosque, Topkapi, etc. The day is cool and sunny. 

last tango in tajikistan

The cabs here run along numbered routes, although, as I learned, those routes are inconsistent or at least sometimes unintelligible to the likes of me. After a lazy Sunday morning I hopped in a number 8 cab en route to the Ismaili Center Dushanbe. It took me a few minutes to find the entrance to the compound, which is surrounded by walls and gates. Eventually, I picked up a visitor's badge and walked in. Outside the building are some nice gardens, where young Tajiks were sitting around in small groups. One kid had a guitar.

A woman met me at the entrance with a clipboard and I said, hopefully, "I'm here for a tour?" Turns out I was the only person there for that purpose so off we went. The building is gorgeous and very functional. Lots of interesting Central Asian features, geometric calligraphy everywhere saying, "Allah hu akbar," and, "La illaha il allah," and giving the names of the prophet's family. Beautiful handpainted tiles from Uzbekistan, hand-carved roof beams and wood screens from Tajikistan. The prayer hall (jamat khana) itself seats up to 1500 people, mostly just on the carpet.

I had a bit of an adventure coming back: It turns out that the small car cabs and the van-sized cabs run along different routes, even if they're the same number. Ignorant of that fact, I jumped in a number 8 van across from the ICD. It went...not to the Serena. Still ignorant of the differing routes, I figured if I just took it to the end of the line it would turn around and come back, no problem. So that's what I did. An interesting way to see Dushanbe, lots of stops and starts for people to get on and off at this market and that. I got out in a parking lot with many number 8 vans, and got into one parked pointing back the way we'd come. It filled up, maybe 12 passengers, and then we took off. But not by the Serena, either. I started just keeping my eyes peeled for a building I recognized in the distance, and eventually I spotted the hideous wedding cake buildings and tugged on the toll-taker's sleeve to get the van to stop and let me out. It was a nice day and the walk back to the hotel from there was pleasant enough. I felt like running, actually, somehow I was very primed and full of energy.

Once back in my room I did some work, went to the gym for half an hour or so, ate dinner and then met my old colleague Noor for a drink. We just parted ways and I'm writing this post to procrastinate packing. It was nice to see him, hear how he's doing, what his plans are -- he's applying to grad schools in the States, UK and Germany for next year. It's always interesting to get a different perspective on our internal politics. He also had a really generous compliment for me, that apparently people at Focus were always amazed at how calm I was; despite however much work, tight deadlines, poor communication, whatever, I never seemed stressed or took out my frustration or stress on anyone else. He said I was a role model for him in that way (!). I'm not sure how exactly I'm that way but it was nice of him to say.

Anyway, now I really do have to pack. Leaving in 5 hours for the airport and I'd like to get a few winks at least before hitting the road.

Weather for Istanbul tomorrow: mid-50s and mostly sunny. I'm ready.

saturday

Had a three-hour meeting today to follow up on yesterday afternoon's kicker. It was good, got some clarity and things are maybe not quite as dire as they seemed. Gotta write a quick email in a bit to just explain how it went and maybe temper yesterday's email update a little.

After it was over I had lunch and then went on a nice long walk down Rudaki Avenue with Kate. It's beautiful outside, probably 70 degrees and sunny. We didn't find what we were looking for -- nice tchotchkes to bring home for AKF USA's Christmas presents and a pair of shorts to replace my now crotch-holey pair -- but that's alright. It was good to get out of the hotel and into the fresh air.

Other than that email I mentioned I don't feel like doing much today. Picked up a few movies on a flash drive from Liz yesterday and will give one a go a bit later on. Gym. Dinner. Reading. Yeah. 

meetings, meetings, and more meetings

Yesterday, I had seven meetings. Today I had two but they were the most important of the whole trip. Today's were the most stressful of the whole trip, though, so it feels like I had another seven. That doesn't even count the pre-meetings and post-meetings I had with Liz and Amin. The last was the biggest of all, with USAID. Liz described it well afterward: The feeling was like watching an episode of "Homeland," where by the end you feel guilty and anxious even though you've just been sitting on your couch. The meeting was very productive but there was a lot of mixed news and, even though it's not even close to my fault and even though I represented well if I may say so myself, afterward I was filled with anxiety about how to share things with the higher-ups. It's going to take a little while to digest all the information we got and see how it all fits together.

Also, last night I was up very late working on the work plan for one of my projects, so I didn't get enough sleep. On the plus side, it's been really nice hanging out with the group of colleagues who are here right now. We went out to the awesomely-named Public Pub the night before last and had some weird chicken sandwiches and the first cheese-stick based veggie burger I've ever come across. We also did a fun game where everyone bought the drinks of the person to their right. I was hacking up a storm so my left-hand neighbor bought me mulled wine with honey. Very sweet (both senses)(corny). There was a bunch of shouting and explosions at one point but it turned out the military is just drilling for its parade during tomorrow's inauguration.

Last night we just had dinner here in the Serena, but it was a good time. Lots of laughter. I forewent the wine in order to be able to focus on work when I got back to my room.

In short, an exhausting end to the trip. Or maybe just a brain-frying end. I don't feel that tired but I think I'm probably operating a little slower than usual right now. A few more meetings over the next couple of days but I'll also get some time to go shopping and see the Ismaili Center, which is apparently an architectural marvel. Then Istanbul (!) and then home (!). Can't wait.

the honourable schoolby and oryx and crake

Just finished Oryx and Crake. Last week finished Honourable Schoolboy. Both super enjoyable, Oryx and Crake more interesting. Will read the rest of the MaddAddam series in the not-too-distant future, I think. 

omar khayyam

Whether at Naishapur or Babylon,
Whether the cup with sweet
Or bitter run,
The wine of life keeps oozing
Drop by drop,
The leaves of life keep falling
One by one.

On my pillow this morning. Gotta run now, more later.

looks like driving weather

After three straight days of beautiful, sunny skies, today dawns cloudy and with a chance of snow. Come on, helicopter! But it looks like driving weather. Oh well.

UPDATE: It's driving weather. They're prepping the car and then we'll be off. On the plus side, we're going to do the whole thing in one go, so I'll be back in Dushanbe tonight. That makes sense, it's much easier to drive on the other side of the mountains and then down in the plains at night than it is over here. 

viyod, tizhmoy and pidrud

After a bit of a comedy-of-errors start to the day -- the guy who stamps visas in the Afghan consulate was sick so the PE staff had to send someone out to find him, then it turned out Oistamo's visa had expired four days ago so she couldn't cross -- Jamshed from PE and I crossed the Tem bridge on foot around 11 AM today. A guy in a beat-up but resilient and surprisingly smooth Hi-Ace picked us up on the Afghan side and we were on our way to visit the three "villages" (really two villages and one loosely unified area with a bunch of sub-villages in it) that PE connected to the grid under the previous USAID project.

First we stopped in Sarchashma, which is the district center and which you can see from the Serena in Khorog, to register with the police and to get our walking-around papers, which consisted of the Shugnan District governor's business card. We also got some bread and this weird cream stuff that comes in a juice box but that you can spread -- it's good, I feel like I've seen it in Latin America, too -- for lunch in lieu of real food. I would not eat the real food over there unless my life depended on it. No sirree.

We bounced up the road to see transformers and go in a couple of people's houses in Tizhmoy and Pidrud villages, to the north. Jamshed's English isn't great, but it's good enough and he was patient and game and, like everyone else at PE, is pretty good-natured. I took lots of pictures, both of the stuff I was there to see (transformers, meters, toaster ovens, TVs, light bulbs, people using those things) and of the landscape. It was a spectacular day and the light up here when the sun's out is like the light in late evening at home on a very sunny day when everything looks a bit polarized. But all day.

Then we drove down to Viyod by way of Sarchashma, where we picked up the elected leader of Viyod and a local mullah who lives there. More transformers and lines, more pictures, including a group shot of me with the various men who had attached themselves to the trip -- a guy from DABS, the Afghan utility and assorted others -- and then the mullah invited us up into the chaikhona for some tea and snacks, which had been laid out for us. It was getting late but we went up, of course. We really did drink and run, though, because Jamshed was worried about the border closing before we could cross back. Not for lack of trying to keep us on the part of our hosts.

On our way back up to the car we went to one other house, and as we were leaving it the mullah stopped and told Jamshed he wanted to make a prayer in honor of our visit. Which he then did, thanking god and the Aga Khan and Pamir Energy and me and asking that I and my children be blessed by god, and then chanting for quite a long time in (at least partially) Arabic. I asked Jamshed to thank him for his generosity and hospitality as my host and that I hope god also blesses him and his family.

As we were piling back into the car the village head, whose name is Bakhtojomol, made a last-ditch effort to Jamshed to get us to stay and eat. Apparently they were going to slaughter a chicken and I guess we'd have spent the night. Jamshed handled it like a pro, though, explaining that I'm sick (true although not THAT sick) and that I have to leave for Dushanbe tomorrow (also true) while avoiding pissing anyone off that I could tell.

We made it across the bridge with less than 10 minutes to spare.

Back at the office Oistamo had gotten some food from the Indian place in town and we partook right then and there. I was hungry. Jamshed took his leave and Oistamo and Mehrafruz and I sat talking for a while longer. We finally left around 7:45.

Now it's 9:30 and I'm going to call it a night pretty soon. Fingers crossed extremely hard for good weather tomorrow so the heli can fly. If it doesn't I'm going to have to drive and I'm not relishing that prospect. Hope outside my control. 

sunday brunch at the serena

In no particular order:

Iran's Foreign Minister sounds infinitely more reasonable and grounded in reality than anyone from the USG or (needless to say) Netanyahu's government.

Typhoon Haiyan...holy shit.

Raw vegetables...when will I learn my lesson?

Past couple of days have gone well although I continue coughing. Friday and Saturday morning were very productive. My training on working with USAID went over really well, I think. The PE staff asked lots of questions and were very engaged throughout, which is a good sign. Notably, I felt extremely comfortable giving the talk and answering questions, which is a great feeling and not at all how it was last year with Satpara in Pakistan. And for that one I even had Caryn with me. Partially that's just because PE folks are friendly, as I know I've said before.

After we finished yesterday, Oistamo, Mehrafruz, another PE colleague and I went to lunch at the same place as Friday. The food was better this time: borscht and pounded-flat steak with legitimately good french fries. Fun conversation again, it's interesting to see the differences between Mehrafruz and Oistamo. Mehrafruz is much more traditional -- believes in heaven and hell and believes morality is tied to your punishment or reward in the next life, believes men and women can't be friends without attraction -- while Oistamo is much less so. We talked at dinner on Friday night about atheism. They were both surprised that I don't believe in god, but Oistamo thinks that when we die, that's it. No soul. I found that kind of interesting, that she would believe in a god but not in souls.

Last night I was getting ready to read, do some bodyweight exercises, and watch the only worthwhile English-language channel on the dial here, BBC World News, but my shot-in-the-dark email to a colleague at AKF Afghanistan panned out when she wrote me back with her cell phone number and said she was going over to some friends' for dinner and why don't I come over? I jumped, obviously, as much because I figured it might help me find an activity to do today as anything else. The hotel night duty lady called a cab and we had a very awkward four-way, two-phone interaction trying to communicate to the driver about where we needed to go. The conversation apparently failed, because we drove to the market area, then pulled back into a rabbit warren of alleys behind the Soviet-era apartment buildings where the middle class and expats live. No one here is rich, as far as I can tell.

The driver stopped behind a seemingly random building, got out and called my colleague Tahira's cell phone. Then he came back over and gestured for me to start walking with him. So we continued through the rabbit warren on foot, with the guy checking buildings periodically, asking the few people around outside where the foreigners live, following their gestures, calling Tahira back and grunting into the phone to Tahira's friend who speaks Russian, and walking some more. Finally I took the guy's phone and called her myself, and she said she'd come downstairs to meet us and asked what was around us. So after about ten minutes of searching, we made it. I was going to give the guy a bit of extra cash because he'd done so much walking around and calling on my behalf, but Tahira said he was incredibly rude to her friend so she just gave him the fare and we went upstairs.

Dinner was tasty if vegetarian. Nice to have some home-made food with well-cooked vegetables, and good company. Coming home was much easier.

This morning I got a chance to Skype with Dad, which was great. Then I did a little work, did some bodyweight exercises and stretching just get the juices flowing a little after wayyyyy too many days without any exercise, showered, and read. Last night's crew showed up plus a couple of guys from OSCE who were here doing election monitoring. They're on their way home but came by the Serena for one last brunch. The food was good -- Pamiris do breakfast much better than they do other meals, as far as I've experienced -- and again nice conversation.

Now I'm sitting in the common area while they clean my room. My social activity itch has been scratched so I'll spend the rest of the day happily plugging away at work, exercising and stretching some more, etc. 

khorog

This morning's helicopter ride was a success, after some drama in the airport because it was a full, 11-passenger flight, the weight limit is 15kg per person, and some people were over capacity. The guy who's in charge of checking people in for the helicopter -- no idea who he works for or what the rest of his job is -- was being very severe. Mehrafruz, Oistamo and Jamshed met me at the airport (and the driver, whose name I forget) and we drove first to the Serena to drop off my suitcase, then to a pharmacy to get some cough syrup, and finally to the office. By then it was lunchtime so Jamshed, Mehrafruz, this lovely older guy Mike (forget his Tajik name but he lives in Staten Island and goes by Mike in the States), and the driver went out to lunch. Jamshed made a special request for the music to be the Scorpions, who did "Dust in the Wind," and are apparently both German and very popular in Tajikistan. Not my cup of tea.

After lunch we did real work, going through and pretty much finishing the performance monitoring plan and making very good headway on the work plan, as well. Tomorrow I'm going to give a presentation on working with USAID and then I'll spend the rest of the day working on some of other documents we have to get ready.

My cough was bad again today after dying down last night, and despite last night being my first solid unaided night's sleep of the trip. Now I've got a headache, to boot, which is mild to the point of not noticing except if I squeeze my eyes shut or look left or right. I did manage to get my hands on some robitussin-equivalent, which I guess helped with the cough. Will take some more tomorrow and hope for the best. But it has phenylephrine in it so definitely not touching it so near bed. The other syrup they got me is apparently just straight ephedrine, which, again, not touching with a 10-foot pole at 8 PM.

Khorog is beautiful right now. It's cold but not very cold. The poplars, which are everywhere, are in full fall orange-and-yellow blast, and it's late enough in the year that the mountains have serious snow caps. On Sunday I'll take some of the day off and hopefully get to walk around and see some sights, even if it's just ones I've already seen. A trip across the Panj is looking likely for Monday afternoon.

I like the PE staff a lot, they're very easy to work with and very friendly. Oistamo, Mehrafruz and I just got dinner (inconsistent Oxford comma use! but I'm not editing it) at a funny restaurant in a basement but done up to look like a pleasure garden, with lattice work overhead and fake grape vines and grapes hanging down, a pool and tree and walls painted withe a bucolic scene.

One other thing to report: Saw a new fruit today. Skin smooth like an apple and yellow like a schoolbus. Flesh dark orange and in texture seemed to be like a plum, but there are seeds instead of a pit. I didn't touch any because I'm immunocompromised and would prefer to avoid admitting any more strange microbes than strictly necessary.

Now I'm gonna do a bit more work, finish unpacking, and call it a night.

you give me fe-vah

Something did, anyway. 100.7, or 38.3 in un-American. Shame.

UPDATE: Down to 99.1 and I feel much better. Chest still congested but I'm not coughing as much, aches present but milder, skin not as sensitive, brain functioning a little more quickly, and I don't want so badly to go to sleep as I did 5-6 hours ago. It was odd, I tried to take a nap around 12:30 and it just wasn't happening. This afternoon was basically a waste but what am I gonna do? My immune system apparently sucks now. 

no heli

It's cloudy in Khorog so the helicopter has been cancelled for today. Now the various admin people are trying to figure out what to do with me: take our chances tomorrow or leave today by road? Only problem with the second option is that it'll probably take two days, since it's too late now to make the trip all at once. So I guess I'd drive to Darwaz or somewhere and then the rest of the way tomorrow.

Disappointing, would have been nice for the weather to cooperate but what are you gonna do? At least next week is supposed to be sunny.

EDIT: Or maybe not, apparently the flight has not been cancelled and now we get to go wait at the airport for a while to see if it'll take off. Fingers crossed.

EDIT 2: Sike, we got to the airport, got in the heli, took off, flew for a little while, then turned around and came back. Clouds too low to fly through the mountains. Try again tomorrow. That's actually kind of nice because I'm a bit sick: persistent cough and that sucky lightheaded, mildly woozy feeling.

Also, this happened: http://www.rawa.org/temp/runews/2013/11/06/mayor-s-son-stabs-engineer-to-death.html. The murdered engineer worked for us. So sad and stupid.

still jet lagged

Mad at myself for not bringing more benadryl, and not making more of an effort yesterday to get my hands on some more. It's 4:40 and I've been awake in bed, tossing and turning with my eyes closed, for an undetermined amount of time. Could be half an hour but I'd guess more like an hour. Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.

election day

Well, it turns out that maybe I just needed an extra-large dose of benadryl. Slept from 11:15-6:45 last night. Very nice. Now I'm out of benadryl because I neglected to pack enough given my apparent increased tolerance for the stuff. Crap.

Today is election day in Tajikistan. Emomali Rahmon will win a new seven-year term as president, with probably around 80% of the vote. There are a bunch of election monitors here from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. They were wearing white arm bands and speaking in French, Spanish, Greek, and sundry other languages at breakfast this morning. I wonder about their presence here -- doesn't it lend an air of legitimacy to a laughably, transparently undemocratic election? The government isn't even trying to have fair elections here, so it's not like monitors can be looking to ferret out intimidation at the polls and raise an international outcry over it. No one has even heard of the opposition party candidates for president, not least because the main opposition party is not participating at all.

Also, it's a national holiday (on that score, at least, Tajikistan is more democratic than our voter-suppression-loving country). So I've been cooped up in the Serena all day, working away inefficiently at various things. Going to the office is especially important on trips because in the hotel it's very easy to let work and rest bleed together. It's 5:40 now and I'll be doing work until I go to bed. I'll also watch some TV while I eat dinner, maybe go to the gym, pack, and read. All mixed together. I showered at 3:30 this afternoon. Weird day.

In other news, I managed to talk to Mom and Claire this morning (success!). Great to see their faces through the miracle of video chat, as always.

Tomorrow morning I head to Khorog. Here's hoping the weather allows us to fly. If not, I guess that means hitting the road. Knocking every piece of wood in the room.

benadryl has stopped working

Fell asleep at 10 or so last night, feeling pretty good about how well I'd made it through the day. Took my usual early-trip dose of benadryl to help me sleep through the night, but I woke up probably around 3 AM anyway. Tossed and turned, took some more benadryl, but now it's 4 AM and I am wide the fuck awake. I slept for a significant chunk of the IAD-IST flight, which is a good thing. Maybe I'll just have to accept improved plane sleeping ability as a trade-off for being able to rely on benadryl to ease me through jet lag. So now I'm cranky and pissed off at this computer for sucking -- the brightness controls don't work and this brand-new piece of crap constantly makes the lovely grinding noise of worn-out computers everywhere. It tells me every 10 minutes that I have low disk space on the D (recovery) drive, which is not even the main hard drive so shouldn't matter. I can't change the trackpad settings. Periodically, when I'm typing in a document or a window like this, the cursor just decides to jump up a few rows. I just downloaded f.lux, which is a piece of software that dims and warms your computer monitor at night and it did nothing. Great.

Deep breaths. I'm going to lie back down in a little bit and hopefully get back to sleep. But while I'm up: Yesterday was good, like I said I managed to stay awake pretty well. Did some work in the morning on PE stuff and then in the afternoon I got invited to sit in on a strategy meeting for the Mtn Societies Dev Support Program. It was helpful to listen and observe the dynamics between the management of the Program and of AKF -- MSDSP is a lot less independent than its equivalents in Pakistan or India. I knew that coming in but it's interesting how clear the difference is in practice. The meeting appeared to go well -- the leadership in the room are comfortable with each other and so while there were some serious points of contention and some pretty tough criticism from up top, no one seemed resentful or angry at the end, in fact there was some good-natured joking as everyone filed out of the conference room. Maybe I'm just bad at reading Tajiks.

UPDATE: I uninstalled and updated the graphics adapter and now the brightness adjuster and f.lux work. Mash'allah.

After the meeting was over I met briefly with Yodgor, who's the Foundation CEO over here. He's very nice and clearly on top of his game. Then it was back to the hotel. We got stuck in some traffic so I bailed on the car and walked the last quarter mile or so. It's nice to be in a place where that doesn't feel uncomfortable, although I am definitely conspicuous here with my fair complexion and tweedy jacket. Traffic or not, in Kabul you just have to wait until you're smack-dab next to the gate.

Guess that's enough for now, might try to grab a few more winks but I don't have my hopes up.

iad-ist-dyu

Here I am, back in the Dushanbe Serena with BBC on in the background and several cups of coffee keeping me more or less awake. The trip over was smooth and uneventful, although somehow I managed to completely miss Natalie and David in the layover at IST. I waited for them to arrive on the buses from the tarmac to the arrivals gate and even hung out at their gate for 30 minutes, but didn't see them at all. Still trying to figure out how that happened.

IST is a nice enough airport, much smaller than DXB (duh). I picked up some baklava for my PE colleagues and read a lot of The Honourable Schoolboy, which I've already almost finished. Maybe 20 pages left. Flying into Dushanbe at night is like looking at the most fabulous night sky you've ever seen through a thick black sheet with patches cut out here and there. The lights are uniformly white pinpricks, very different from the diversity of lights you see flying into a first-world city at night: headlights and taillights, neon signs, stop lights, yellow street lamps. In between the concentrated explosions of pinpricks Dushanbe is dark as anything. Quite a nice sight, actually.

Istanbul is a better stopover than Dubai because there's no killer 12- or 13-hour leg; IAD-IST is less than nine hours. But the downside is that it's back-to-back redeyes. Finally got into my room about 6:30 AM local time, 10 hours ahead of DC, and then rested my eyes and slept alternately for about 3.5 hours. I fear the jet lag is going to be rough tonight. But right now, time to raise someone at the office and make my way over there.