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.

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