The Middle Class and “Afghan Fatigue”

“I don’t know these people, I can’t relate to them, this country used to be so decent now everything is money, money, money. It didn’t used to be like this”. It could be the sound of regret of any older person anywhere bemoaning the passing of youth, missing the familiar faces of friends and family moved on. But this is Afghanistan and my friend is almost like an island unto himself in a land changed forever and for good!

As we drive through Kabul in his VW saloon, an odd experience in Kabul, he points out where the cinemas, discotheques and girls in mini skirts used to be that are now gone. The streets he knew as a boy are barely recognizable under the blanket of dust and rubbish tossed out on them.

This is the middle class of Afghanistan. Once heartened by the opportunity to return their home after the fall of the Taliban in 2001, they have come back to build a new life. The middle class now finds itself wearied by the constant battle required to build anything at all which someday might again resemble the country of their parents. Parents who were wealthy enough to get their children – then teenagers – to the West in the early 80s saving them from the coming thirty years of war or a life of uncertainty as refugees in Iran or Pakistan. They were teachers and business people, some were political also but they got their children out one way or the other. They were the lucky ones and they were luckier than some who had to walk out!

This group now finds themselves in between the ever shifting power at the top of the country paid for by the West and above the mass poverty at the bottom. But no one is bothered about the middle class. Probably the only group really capable of building something here are not poor enough for charity or rich enough to be connected to influence, which is everything here. If you are not connected you are nothing and you will pay.

For example, in Kabul there are many roads which Afghans cannot drive down. These are the roads which have foreign embassies or government ministries on them and special permits are required to access the roads. I work for a company which has such a permit. Before I arrived, I had read interviews with taxi drivers and other people heavily reliant on transport bemoaning the destruction that the closure of such roads had caused to their businesses. I recently observed first hand what this frustration is like whilst accompanying my friend on a trip to get groceries.

As well as being fluent in English, German and his native Dari, (and possessing a German passport) he still could not drive down a road leading to another road on which his family has had a clothes shop since the 70s. His frustrations finally getting the better of him, he unloaded onto the Afghan National Police (ANP) officer whose job it was to ensure that all the security contractors, consultants, media types (myself), etc. all get to go down the road which doubles as a handy short cut as well as being the road leading to the MFA. Basically, it’s a road for all of the people who have been busy fixing the country since 2001.

Well done, good job by the way, especially to the UN who will have made millionaires of so many consultants but never mind. At least there will be lots of shiny reports on what it was exactly that went wrong here for M.A. and PHd students to do their dissertations on far from the horror of this place.

Incidentally, the next time you hear the term foreign aid or that X amount of millions will be invested in one country or another like the recent announcement that the U.K. will invest 500 million in Afghanistan over the next ten years, remember that this money (contracts) will be bid on by large Western consultancies who will ultimately subcontract to a smaller consultancy who will in turn subcontract to an even smaller consultancy. At least four companies will take their cut before any work will be done on the ground so if you’re wondering why your country is still in Afghanistan or where all the money went or, more importantly, why your son might still be fighting here this is one of the reasons. When the distribution of aid is being slowed down so much by this process and so much of it is being siphoned off by companies which are required to be Western in the first place in order to be awarded contracts, it’s no wonder that this war has gone on for so long.

But to go back to my friend. To add insult to injury, before we approached this checkpoint, he asked me to speak English to the ANP officer and said he would pretend to be my driver so that maybe we would get past the ANP officer. In the end after much pleading, followed by shouting, followed by insults, we were denied our short cut and spent another 40 minutes in traffic. It wasn’t the first time that a well-educated professional from this country had asked me to do this in their homeland to save a bit of time.

I recently travelled to the documentary film festival HotDocs in Toronto with a documentary I had made before I came to Afghanistan. I also had a number of ideas up my sleeve to pitch to various commissioning editors only to be met by the the term “Afghan Fatigue”. Afghan Stars, Afghan cricket teams and Afghan heroin addicts have all had their day in the sun and it seems that the broadcasting industry is done with Afghanistan, which in effect means the war is almost over now.

But it is over in the same way that painters finish work, in that it’s not really over, it’s just that the work has stopped or is stopping. Barack Obama and David Cameron have recessions to turn around and neither leader will be afforded much leeway for mistakes during their terms as they are experimental leaders for their respective countries so as to be able to say “we pulled out of Afghanistan” will do nicely indeed when being considered for re-election.

When Jim Clarke said recently “we are not here to fix the education system of a broken 13th century society” despite the gasping of the new Conservative UK government, he was not far off. In a country in which women’s ankles substitute as cleavage because that’s the only bit of female flesh men will see in this country, at least of women who are not their wives, it’s hard to not agree with him. I might have disapproved of this comment had I not had the displeasure of having my girlfriend gawked at by an entire street we were walking down a few weeks back. Although she is an American, it does not help that she could easily be mistaken for an Afghan herself as her parents are Indian.

My friend from the middle class told me of his own repulsion of this when catching himself and his friends gawking at women on occasion. But again, he reminds me it didn’t used to be like this and that he himself once punched a guy leering in through his car window at a niece of his.

I am reminded of all the articles of the sexually repressed island I come from about pederasts and sex fiends especially from the clergy who warp nations whilst saving the individual soul. Of course, the whole of Afghanistan is glued to soaps which come out of India and Turkey in which women look and dress… well, like women. But, of course, this is not for Afghan women. Although the tight fitting jeans and vibrant colored makeup that women wear here suggest that they themselves might have something to say about this if their husbands would allow them. 

Such is my annoyance on this point that when I recently moved house the young chaokidar’s* fascination with two westerners i.e. my girlfriend and I, quickly began to irritate me. Part of this has to do with the Afghan obsession with Bollywood but when a 14 year old boy, which is my best guess at his age, whose job it is to effectively clean up after you lounges around staring at you while you eat, you quickly lose patience. In this country, your home truly is your castle. Afghanistan stops at the front door otherwise it will get you in the end, the exhausting hot days and conservative ever watchful society make you crave privacy.

On this point, I should say before coming here I never really had much of an opinion on child labour except to say that it was something happening somewhere in the world and yes, of course, it was to be disapproved of. It is everywhere in this country and as long as things remain the way they are it will be a necessary evil. However, for the people of this country, it is keeping food on tables and roofs over heads; therefore, it is not an evil at all but simply a way of life. A service provided by Afghans for Afghans and, of course, the foreigners.

The next time some bleeding heart stops you on Queen Street, Grafton Street or Patrick Street, ask him if he knows how much of your pound or euro will make it to its destination. You can take your pick of NGOs, they are all out here and it’s not with your pocket change! They are bidding and lobbying for the big money, where the real action is!

*Chaokidar. A servant who guards the house and does various chores such as cleaning, grocery shopping etc.

Welcome Back and Tears in Candlelight

Flying out over Ireland all of the cliches about her are true. She is indeed beautiful and below the patchwork quilt of greens and now in winter browns resemble more of a chocolate cake than an island of people.

Although I will spend two more days in the UK before I am to leave, I blink and find myself on a runway at Heathrow looking out of a window at a queue of hulking planes waiting to take off. Theses extraordinary machines defying gravitng every 30 seconds. As the front wheel of the beast lifts off the ground it never feels like we are travelling fast enough for the back of her to lift off. I wonder if this will be a flight in which the rear of the plane will surrender to gravity and kill us all. Flying has never been my strong suit.

Returning to Afghanistan for the first time I am both happy and sad. Sad at leaving family and close friends behind but happy that before me lies this extraordinary country of which I have still seen nothing. Having answered the same question over Christmas and New Year about what Afghanistan is like, to the point where I have my answers off by heart. I have given this as my spiel, Kabul or living in Kabul is not living in a war zone or anything nearly as glamourous or as exciting as that might sound. It is indeed a heavily militarised zone but the frontline is a world away from where we are and perhaps it not necessarily even in this country.

At the airport and by chance I run into a work colleague, a driver in fact who was there collecting his sister. I am surprised to receive the warmest of welcomes from him. Afghans kiss each other on each cheek when they meet and this is the first time I have received this welcome. Bizarrely for a country so reserved with the opposite sex; at least in public anyway the displays of affection men reserve for each other are extraordinary. Holding hands on the streets is normal and at the office I have seen young men draped over each other and even stroking each others necks.

On the way back to the guesthouse from the airport the city before me continues to mesmerise, the mountains at the end of every road cut into the skyline which is turning purple as the sun drops out of view for another day. The country does not look nearly as ragged as I remembered or indeed threatening. On the way to work the following morning I tell an Afghan friend half joking that I think I will walk to work tomorrow. His face strains slightly at the idea and he says but “organise a guard to come with you” thereby defeating the point of the idea. Outside the ordinary people going about the business of building roads or going to school makes me wonder what we spend so much time securing ourselves from?

Has Afghanistan made prisoners of us or have we made prisoners of ourselves? It occurs to me though that perhaps this is the last thought that people who get kidnapped think.

For me though there are two Afghanistans, the one I have been welcomed back to with kisses and there is the other.

Before Christmas:

Tears glistening in candlelight roll slowly over the lines which cut through her cheeks, she rests her fingers over her forehead to cover her face from me “I must bear, must bear”, this is not the first time I have heard these words from her. For it is the end of a long week of abuse, being called a bitch and a whore and being slapped in the face by a police officer outside of a Ministry on account of her ethnicity. There will be no journalists on doorsteps here, no mention on news programmes, no deafening outcry. No, just the sound of another day for another person bearing here, actually just a footnote in a life spent bearing.

What the words “Ilsam has no borders” have meant for her which I mention only because sin comes up so often!

She uses words to describe herself which only victims of terrible abuse use and even then she does not make statements but asks questions of herself. In an effort to console her I compare Afghanistan’s ‘Church and State’ to what my own country was like once upon a time. A Cardinal from the Vatican leaving the office of the Minister of Foreign affairs explaining why the Vatican did not co-operate with enquiries into industrial abuse comes to the fore. How it must gall them to be on their knees, to observe from such a perspective must make them empty reach as they choke on their own hypocrisy. It could be worse for them they could have been born on their knees like so many.

As Kabuls streets turn into a chocolate coloured slush from the early snow fall the children I have been watching from a car window all day long come to mind as they are practically barefoot. Some of them sell ‘Espand’ for 10 afs, (20 cents USD) a pungent smokey substance produced by burning Espand Seeds on Charcoal in tin cans hanging from string. Although I have seen these children who’s faces are black from the smoke selling this many times I have not yet seen it being bought. The substance is typically waved over the heads of children as a blessing to protect them from any harm which might come to them as a result of bad thoughts directed towards them.

But they are not children on these streets, they look children but their behaviour is that of animals who’s daily thoughts are only about survival. In a city of such poverty and like all cities with poverty, of which there are no exceptions there are of course the gross monuments pointing skyward. My friend tells me that “in Islam we bear unlike in the West where people are inclined to do” implying make things happen and not follow the path chosen for them.

Well my friend is on her knees now like so many before her. Comparing the sins which have been committed against her with the tiny infractions she is so turbulent about causes me to spit. I pass her some tissues as it is the only practical thing I can do for her and regret how upset she has become from recounting the week of abuse.

Since being back I have spoken with Western friends about the experience of returning. It is as if though we have not returned to a country at all but rather to another universe altogether. The contradictions abound as the rich tapestry of this experience continues to present colour after colour.

I know I can look forward to many more days in which the violence of one persons experience and that of many others like her will be in stark contrast to the words…

“Welcome back to Afghanistan”.

Us, Them and The Defiant One

“Those People” or “Them” are terms which I have heard here now many times. For example “They are different aren’t they, fanatical!” granted this was a response to the further slaughter of innocent people but it was also in reference to the culture in general as if though “these people” i.e. Afghans were somehow more susceptible to fanaticism than other groups of people.
To which I am reminded of an interview with the Film Director Jim Sheridan in which he complained about being continually asked why he made so many films about Northern Ireland. His response was, “I say why make films about anything else! Why make films about anything other than the North, they were ordinary people driven mad by thirty years of war”.
How appropriate comparisons between the armed republican movement in the North as well as the South of Ireland are with Islamic Fundamentalism I am not sure but they are relative to my understanding of this place.
Here the word ‘Taliban’ or ‘Talib’ can mean many different things. There is the hard core centre from the period of the first gulf war, there are the criminals who utilise the banner ‘Taliban’ and there are the poor for whom life is merely a staging point for eternity. This belief or perhaps poverty can be purchased or exploited cheaply. If you are poor i.e. if absolute poverty is a way of life for you well you can save your family by blowing yourself up. You get eternity and your family get the cash.

But to go back to ‘us’ and ‘them’. I have been asked about my life and where I from come in curious terms by young friends and colleagues here. Questions like “Westerners are cold aren’t they?” or “Do you have a girlfriend there and do you sleep with her?” fascinate me. To be enquired about as if though I was from some other planet is quite something.

My friend who describes not just westerners but me also as cold or in some way unknowable surprises me.

Extract from Diary early October.

Today perhaps for the first time I am genuinely concerned for my own safety but for the strangest of reasons. I have not ventured south or in any direction for that matter too far outside of Kabul. Instead I am walking with a friend to get a taxi. The only difference is that my friend happens to be a Muslim woman. Heads are literally turning on every shop stoop. My companion however whom I have been in contact with for a couple of weeks is bold. I had mistaken her for a fragile little thing when I first met her largely due to the fact that our understanding of each other’s languages is quite weak. As always however I must rely on the Afghan to have English, although my Dari is improving.
The attention we are drawing on the street makes me think that this is the second time today that we have overstayed our welcome. We spent the previous couple of hours at a café; another plush eaterie for westerners complete with outdoor garden and menu priced in U.S. dollars. Expats are too lazy to use Afghani’s or Afs, 50 of which converts to $1.
When I entered the café which was my first time there my friend called to me but I did not recognize her without her hijab or head scarf. Strange how a person can only be themselves behind high walls. We stumbled along for the afternoon fumbling over each other’s languages and although she is overly apologetic about her English if she did not have the level of English which she has our meeting would be pointless. I am still learning the present tense and still on the first two verbs of that tense ‘to be’ (Budan) and ‘to have’ (Daashtan) which phonetically is ‘dawshtan’.
Although the waiters are perfectly polite and provide the same service to us as everyone else they take every opportunity to steal a look in our direction. As I am positioned with my back to the corner I cannot see through the window from which my friend tells me we are being watched. She says rather gleefully that “they have big questions marks over their heads” at this point something is starting to occur to me which will become clearer later on.
The irony perhaps of the situation is that the abhorrence of a Muslim woman alone with a man and even worse a westerner would be the least of their worries if only they knew her whole story.
My friend is a prisoner and has been all of her life. Although she was born in Iran her Afghan parentage meant she could not get citizenship even having spent 20 years of her life there. She was imprisoned for a year for being at a party and not wearing the hijab but also for drinking alcohol. During her time there she tried to take her own life and was only narrowly unsuccessful. Before finally being deported she also spent a month at the infamous Sang-e-Safid prison and she is still only twenty four. Speaking with her I feel as if though I have not lived any kind of a life at all. I do not know why.

The following day I am in a people carrier going to a camp for research for a film. I am with two co-workers, one who is an expat and the other an Afghan. I ask my Afghan friend if he is married. This is one of the first questions most Afghans have asked me and they are always surprised when they find out that at the ridiculous age of thirty that I am not. Most Afghans have gotten the marriage or at least engagement thing out of the way at twenty. My friend explains to me that he has only just finished two years of trying to make contact with a girl he fancied. He explains to me that he began by watching this girl at University to try and get an idea of her character. If for instance a group of men had wolf whistled at her and she had looked in their direction this would have been a clear indicator that she would not be for him. Having established her worth he subtlely slipped her notes expressing his interest in her.
I have to admit that the complexity of this story has me imagining all kinds of scenarios and as such I am not sure how he got to the stage he is at now whereby he will be shortly trying to arrange a meeting between their families to get the ok for engagement.
At this point I am reminded of my lunch with my female friend the previous day when my work colleague explains to me that he could not have been seen with this girl alone without the express permission of her family. He tells me that if he was spotted in the street with her by a brother or uncle a fight might have ensued.

Yet again I find myself receiving vital information after the fact.

As I am thinking about all of this later on at home I recall the look in my friend’s eyes as she was walking through the street with me. Although she comes up to about my elbow she was totally fearless, as if though walking with me was in some way an act of defiance. The area we were walking in is an area in which westerners spend money therefore nothing was ever likely to happen but I will not forget the feeling of being watched that intensely anytime soon.

So I wonder now about “us” and “them”, how very alike we are but also not at all. I can only say that I like “them” a lot and what a shame it is that we do not meet enough or that when we do it is only in the worst of circumstances.

The Violence is on Outside

The violence is on outside and although I am in the city where it is taking place I am also not. I am as removed from the heightened tension as if I were in my living room at home. Perhaps it either happens to you or it doesn’t; violence that is, you are either a part of it or you are not.

University protestors flood past our building. The cause of their outrage is the alleged burning of a Quran by U.S. solidiers. But there are two versions to this story and the one outside the window is the Pakistani one. The other version is that a house which happened to go on fire during combat also contained a Quran. The truth is always restless here.

Anyway I watch the outrage of these young people, blunt and untempered from my window. I am also watching it on the television in front of me. If the wave were to change direction I could be on the television also. One of the banners reads ‘We want Islam, not democracy’ which alarms a friend of mine who has been here for over a year. She exclaims that if the most educated people in the country are carrying these banners what hope do they/we have! Although I do not respond I disagree.

In our office the expats that have been here a year or more feel it harder, they are closer to their mortality than I am. I do not know how I feel. I have been ill for a few days with my annual winter cold, chesty cough thing. But something is different, I can feel my lungs now in a way I never could before, the soft tissue keeping the oxygen travelling to my heart feels stretched. Is it the further thinning of the air in winter mixed with the flood of burning wood from the Bukharis or am I anxious. Are the images being scanned by my eyes sending warning signals into the depths of my brain, I am not sure.

A few days later I am looking at the image of an expat being carried out of a guesthouse on the back of an Afghan guard. I am reminded of the meat that hangs in the bazaars covered in flys. We do not eat this meat; our cooks know this would kill us so they protect us with special meat. The Afghans are the hard shell on the outside, we are the soft core.

If a bomb explodes here the $100’000 armed jeep usually saves it’s contents while the poor souls on the outside die or are maimed in their dozens and when it gets just that bit too hairy the contents of those jeeps get on planes and leave en masse.

For now though we are still here.

‘My friend we are in Afghanistan…’

View of Kabul from Toop Tapa or Cannon Hill; so called because of the two cannons which sit on top of it.

I receive a light tap on the shoulder followed by the words “my friend, we should do this quick, we are in Afghanistan and people are watching”. I do not need to look around to see whose voice the advice is coming from. We are getting nowhere with the shot anyway. Trying to get an Afghan woman close to a strange man even when you are paying them is some effort. I could not have imagined how difficult this would be. Earlier on in the morning our 2^nd A.D. asked me if we could do this shot at our offices. I don’t think I even answered him as I did not understand why we would do the shot at our offices when we went to the trouble of bringing our crew to this location for the sequence.

When I glance around I see what my friend is referring to. Mobile phones are recording us as we film, I do not look at the faces. The girl in the shot whose job it is to record one of our musician’s with her mobile phone is thoroughly embarrassed by the large crowd which now surrounds her. In retrospect it is to our 2^nd A.D’s credit that he managed to get her to the location without someone from her family to act as chaperone.

It is not the first time during this shoot that I will have someone watching out for me. Two days later at a location near Bagram base as U.S. fighter jets rush towards the sound barrier I find out that an on looker was trying to figure out if I was an American or not with a view to beating me up with his gun and robbing me. He was dissuaded from doing this unbeknownst to me by the crew who said that ‘I was one of them’. Apparently he would not have shot me as this would have been a waste of expensive bullets which could be put to better use shooting ducks on the lake where we were filming.  ‘The cloak of Irishness’ as Adam Clayton once put it is of no use here as I am the same colour as all of the other invaders. No good pulling out the Irish passport and claiming to be from a neutral country which would be bullshit anyway and even I did manage to get the thing out on time no one would know where the country was anyhow.

Fighter jets and hulking cargo planes constantly fly over this beautiful location. Kids sell tiny sachets of shampoo along it's banks. For landlocked Afghans this is their beach.

In my first week I put my faith in the people I was travelling with to view these locations and thankfully my instinct for my new work colleagues was correct. This despite being told rather alarmingly by another colleague in the first week that ‘Afghans were a jealous people and not to be trusted”. I put this down to good old fashioned tribal distrust and ignored it; I could not live like that anyway, not for a year.

A trip down the river at Sayaad

I don’t believe for all of the invasions and wars this country has endured that Afghans have ever been defeated by anyone except themselves. The distrust which sometimes rears its head among Afghans can take a person back. All of these cultural differences between the main groups and the hundreds of others smaller ones have served no purpose whatsoever accept to destroy this country from the inside out. Of course there is the argument that as a country it is the abused child that grows up itself to be an abuser.

On the last day of Eid I take a trip to a place called Paghman with some friends. The discipline of Muslims during Ramadan; the month of fasting is extraordinary. They get up before the sun rises to eat at around 4:30am and they do not eat again til Sun down. Eid which is the holiday period after Ramadan is determined by the alignment of the moon towards the end of the month. I have asked how they know the correct time to call it but I think the ordinary Afghans that I know seem happy enough to just leave it to the Mullahs to sort it out.

As we leave Kabul for Paghman the kites over the city are a sight to behold. My friends recall as children collecting broken glass and melting it down into a fine wire which they would then use for kite fighting, the object of which is to cut the other kite fighters wire with yours. They both bemoan the fact that the string is now simply imported from Pakistan and cutting the other guys string can take hours now. Looking at the kites though it’s hard not to see them as a metaphor for escape. This country has imprisoned itself, religious obedience, the separation of men from women everywhere whether it is in work canteens or wedding halls and so on. Although I am slow to be critical of a culture I have known for such a short time the traditions of the country seem to be odds with the will of the people or least the ones I have met. Young men bemoan the stringent conditions for marriage and I have seen people hide their mouths as they ate  tiny bits of bread during Ramadan not to mention the ones who’s health suffer also.

As we venture further into Paghman the mountains on either side of us become steeper. We finally reach our destination which is a series of seating areas held up on posts over lots of little streams. I am told that this is one of the most dangerous parts of Kabul, one which is actually run by a warlord. I look up at the mountains on either side of us which are getting dark. My friend recalls being a child refugee coming back through this very area from Iran and how terrified he was of the pitch black of this place. We stay and have some green tea which is prepared by a man near the river.

As we head back towards Kabul my companion jokes that if anyone stops us they will kill him first confusing him for my bodyguard.

Looking out at the silhouette of the mountains on the way back I imagine all of the men who have hidden in them throughout the years and all of the men who still hide in them in the south and in other places. Some of these mountains have roads leading to the summits and can be seen from the air on the approach to Kabul. One thing which stands out as we approach the city is how there is no sodium vapour glow which one associates with even small western cities. Instead the tiny lights of the houses peppered into the mountains twinkle like fairy lights on a Christmas tree. The road before us is lit only by our car headlights and those of the oncoming traffic, no street lamps, no cat’s eyes, no black spots or warning signs; bizarrely it feels safer than any road I’ve ever been on. Perhaps this is down to the fact that driving over fifty is really going to play havoc with the suspension.

As we drive in silence I still have to pinch myself, I am in Afghanistan.

Kabul Week 1

View of the Old City.

Written on the 4th of September.

Today it is Friday, obviously enough but here that means Sunday which is a religious day and so we are off work. It is the morning after the night before, we were at a house party last night so the internet connection is a little less painfully slow owing to the fact that there aren’t that many people using it due to hangovers.
Right now the distant rumble of helicopters regularly fades up to a thundering boom as they pass overhead. They are so close I wonder if I will become one of those poor unfortunate souls you see on the news who’s homes have been bombed due to dodgey intelligence. They roar past only a few storeys overhead.
The party I was at like most things, whether it is eating out or going to a bank invloves being whisked through the city in a 4X4 to a building behind high walls, with armed guards on the outside and body searches on the inside. Being in such close proximity to so many people with weapons is at once alarming and exciting. I put the latter down to desensitisation as a result of too much televison. Perhaps this will change when I finally hear or see the real thing.

A guard with no teeth and who was unable to speak barring a few grunts brought me to the top of Babur Park to show me the tomb of the dead king. He simply wanted to share some of the history of his country with me.

With Kabul I can’t help but think of Speilbergs re-envisioning of ’War of the Worlds’. The abrupt end reveals that the invaders were finally out done not by military might but by microscopic organisms which the human race had spent millions of years buliding up defences to thus earning them the right to exist on earth.
Well being in Kabul is like this. The people who arrived at this land whenever that was found a place which is 1800 metres above sea level, surrounded by mountains and far too close to the sun for comfort and yet they decided to stay. The dust which rolls down from the mountains and up from the bombed, dirt track roads is everywhere and so you inhale whatever happens to be in it. Blowing my nose reveals all manner of new colours and solids as well a little bit of blood from all the sneezing and scratching which obviously isn’t good. I trust my life (perhaps a bit overdramatic) with the Afghans I work with here as I travel about their city. Again I find myself without the proper immunities to protect myself. At home big city sensibilties are hard earned, you learn to spot the troublemakers and cross the road. Here I am illiterate, I cannot read the faces of the three million or so inhabitants of this city therefore crossing the road is pointless I must rely on the strangers who have welcomed me into their country and who; although I cannot yet converse with, I trust.

Week 1 has been a bit like being told you are going to die. As I travel about this city and outside it for work, Fear, Denial, Anger and Acceptance have all played their part in week 1. Oddly now I find myself with another problem. In feeling safe I must guard against complacencey, yet another immunity I do not have.

So far though, so good.