Home and Home

July 29, 2009 After 5 months in Kabul, I returned home to Washington, DC in May. I am back in the fold of family and friends, starting up newspaper subscriptions, going to my Sunday Farmer’s Market, and sorting out next steps. I miss Afghanistan. I miss bumping down Street #3 in Ansari Watt to get to my office on Street #6 in Taimani. I miss Habib’s scrambled eggs with onions, Ali’s fried chicken, and Mantoo and Ashak at the Safi Landmark Hotel. I miss struggling to speak Dari with Qader and Sayed Mohammed, my drivers. I miss the gleeful feeling of understanding something they have said to me in Dari. I miss Mirwais, Rashid, and Zaher, my beloved bodyguards, fighters from Panjshir province. I miss choclets in glass dishes, Nan at every meal, carrots the size of a Louisville Slugger. I miss café latte and tuna melts at the Cabul Coffee House. I miss the smell of baking bread floating up and down the street. I miss it all.

Afghanistan became home for me, and, indeed, it felt like home from the moment the armored car that claimed me at the Kabul Airport on January 1 drove out onto the main road leading to the city. Looped barbed wire on top of concrete walls. Wedding halls as big as a city block festooned with neon palm trees and brides and grooms. Roadside stalls, donkey carts, Humvees. Adobe houses and ruins of adobe houses. And dust. Lots of dust. I took it all in and with my first breath, Kabul felt like home.

There is home and there is home. In May, I came home to my beautiful daughter who met me at the airport early on that May morning. I had not seen her for 5 months. I can’t begin to describe the feelings that overcame me when I spotted her on the other side of Customs. Tears and more tears and then a fierce hug. This is home to me: my children.

Two days later, my daughter and my aunt and I drove north to my son’s graduation from Wesleyan University. We were joined there by my brother and one of my best friends from high school – my son’s godmother – and her daughter – my goddaughter, and a dear friend from high school and her partner. More home. Marking my son’s huge accomplishment was a thrill, a passage into a new cycle of life.

With a wonderful Commencement behind us, I set off for California to visit family and friends. My niece, Sophia, charmed me with her soulful manner. My nephew, John, left me in the dust, a bundle of boyish energy. Time with high school friends – sisters to me – was precious. We have been together, first as boarding school classmates and since then as friends, for almost 50 years. And we always pick up where we left off. Was Mrs. H. really having an affair with Mr. H? Why did Mrs. Berry insist on calling the Filipino staff “The Boys” when not one of them was a day under 50? Why, when four of us were caught smoking 6 weeks before graduation, did Mrs. Bill ask us, “Whatever possessed you to smoke on May Day?”

On to Napa Valley and a dreamy party in a dear friend’s backyard. This is a friend with whom I share a birthday and so much more. Decades of sharing, caring, and laughing. Many cherished friends came to that dinner. I sat in a circle of loved ones and talked about Afghanistan. My friend, Faith, the photographer, arranged the burka I brought from Afghanistan as if it was lounging on a hammock and declared it a “burka-lounger!”

Now I am back in DC looking ahead to next steps, reconnecting with family and friends, settling in at home. Not a day passes that I don’t think of Afghanistan and long to return. In my pocket, I carry the tasbeh (prayer beads) given to me by Qader. I puzzle the agate surface of the ring I bought in Afghanistan with my thumb. I look at the framed photo of my friends Ali, Tamim, Mojib, Sayed Mohammed, Rashid. Zuhal, Kamila, Modera, Meena, and Parwana. I miss them.

Home is a corner of my heart where I tuck memories and images. The days my children were born. Their birthdays. School graduations. Athletic events. School plays. Notes they have written me. Funny things they have said. Holidays together. Home is wherever my children are. I am home now and I am happy. And, yet, my other home beckons. I long to see the mountains ringing Kabul, to bump along those rutted streets, to visit Abdul Qadeer’s carpet shop on Chicken Street. I miss Afghanistan. I miss my kind, generous Afghan friends. I long for the smell of Nan baking in a streetside oven.

I am drawn again and again to James Michener’s Caravans, published in 1964, the story of a young diplomat assigned to rescue an American girl who has disappeared in Afghanistan. Michener writes:

I’ve been told that diplomats and military men remember with nostalgia the first alien lands in which they served, and I suppose this is inevitable; but in my case I look back upon Afghanistan with special affection because it was, in those days, the wildest, weirdest land on earth and to be a young man in Kabul was the essence of adventure.

The city of Kabul, perched at the intersection of caravan trails that had functioned for more than three thousand years, was hemmed in on the west by the Koh-i-Baba range of mountains, nearly seventeen thousand feet high, and on the north by the even greater Hindu Kush, one of the major mountain massifs of Asia. In the winter these powerful ranges were covered with snow, so that one could never forget that he was caught in a kind of bowl whose rim was composed of ice and granite.

I will be back, Afghanistan.

Happy Mother's Day from Kabul!

May 10, 2009 This morning as the car rounded the corner on Street #6, Taimani Watt, Kabul, Afghanistan, the balloon seller was making his way down the road, stopping to let neighborhood children admire his bouquet. I couldn’t help but smile and feel lucky to have this Mother’s Day in Kabul!

Happy Mother’s Day to one and all, near and far, especially to the two who call me Mom!

"I'll have two, please!"

Pure joy!

The balloon seller's bouquet.

Leaving Kabul

April 24, 2009 Living in Kabul is hard. Leaving Kabul will be just as hard. I am accustomed in four swift months to the smell of Nan baking on an open fire on any city street, to the bumps and jostles on Street #3 as our armored car plows along to work, to the little altar of ironed laundry that greets me when I return to the Guest House after work. The muzzein’s call to prayer awakens me every morning, shakes me to awareness at noon, and ushers in the evening. I have friends here.

Some days the sensory overload knocks me out. Body odor, sewage, garbage, goats, meat, even the soot smells. I hold my breath and then I exhale. I don’t want to be one of those silly people who blanch at the slightest discomfort. I practice mindfulness. There is dust everywhere in Kabul. You can measure the passage of time in the layers of dust.

Much of the time, something here doesn’t work. Satellite TV flickers in and out. Channels switch, so what was once the BBC Lifestyle Channel is now the Peace Channel. Bollywood rules on the air waves. The generator flips on and off like clockwork every day at 4:00 PM. One stop light in Kabul City works from time to time, if you define “working” as maintaining a steady red or green light for 24 hours straight. Showerheads, made in China, work for a time and then they inexplicably explode, hurtling projectile parts in the direction of the bather.

The contrasts stack up: the Safi Landmark Hotel stands resplendent in the Shar-i-Naw district of Kabul, a glass and steel monument to 21st century form and function. The mud houses scaling the hillsides surrounding Kabul tenaciously cling to their dirt foundations. How do the owners get the building materials up those precipices, I wonder every time I look out my window?

Donkey carts cut in front of busses offering “Special for Tourists.” Cars dare each other to the brink, honk, and get on with it. School girls in clusters of a dozen or more, dressed identically in black suits and white chador, walk together giggling and holding hands. The children of Street #6 line up at the well to pump water to bring home. I wonder if they know that they live in the Afghanistan we hear about in U.S. media.

Three months is chump change in Afghanistan. Just enough time to pull back the veil and catch a glimpse of the antiquity that seeps into every corner of Afghan culture and holds this country hostage to a past century. Women in pale, dusty blue burkas shuffle through the streets, heads bowed low. Men in turbans, pakols, karakols (Karzai caps), plaid scarves, salwar kamiz. But then, just when you think you’re stuck in the last century, there are young women in tight jeans, sandals showcasing painted toenails, leather jackets, and head scarves, giving the lie to the burka. Men in Armani suits and Rolex watches straight off the cover of GQ.

Kabul’s bridal shops feature Anglo mannequins that stare off into the far horizon as if mortified to be caught in the 1950s style bridesmaid dresses they are hawking. In the Fancy Wedding Store, they are decked out in heavy satin floor length gowns in dark colors with intricate beading. Most of the mannequins lack complete arms, stopping at the elbows.

I have sunk roots here, but I have gotten tired. I have so much more than I need, while my Afghan friends struggle against such hardship, whether poverty, oppression, or violence. I am not courageous, nor brave compared to the Afghan women who put their lives on the line two weeks ago to protest a law that diminishes women. My simple acts of activism pale in comparison to young Afghan women who stood shoulder to shoulder to reject the notion that women should have to seek permission from their husbands when they want to leave the house, that women should have to “preen” at the whim of their husbands, that women should have to submit to sex on demand by their husbands. These young women stood up to the stones thrown at them and to the chants of “whores” issued by men and women alike who turned out in huge numbers to put the protestors on notice that they had better go home and submit in silence.

How am I going to leave my Afghan home? Who will tell me every morning that “you have beautiful eyes, Mum?” Who will put a dish of sweets outside my office before I arrive? Bring me hot tea? Serve me rice and Nan and fresh fruit at lunch? And who, when I thank them for all this abundance, will respond, “Why not, Miss?” which I figure is the first English phrase most of my Afghan colleagues have learned in the English course they are offered at our office. “Why not?”

These days, I dream of hugging my children. We have never been apart for this long. My beautiful Louisa who cares for her charges as a kind hearted, brilliant social worker, and on top of that worries that I am not safe, especially after hearing on the Today Show that Kabul is ‘the most dangerous city in the world today,’ who always makes sure her Ma and her brother are safe and sound. My handsome Alex whose creative passion is bursting into bloom, who quietly but surely cultivates extraordinary ideas from seed to film, who unfailingly loves his sister and his mother, who worries in his own way. I ache to hug them.

But it will be hard to leave Kabul. In some small ways – and this will sound grandiose, but I don’t know how else to say it – I see myself as a surrogate for my country. I was here the day Barack Obama was sworn in as President. That was the day my Afghan friends asked me if Barack Obama would help Afghanistan, and listed all that needs doing: security, poverty, infrastructure, employment, education, women’s rights. “Yes,” I told them, just short of a promise, “Barack Obama wants to help Afghanistan.” And I believe he does. But I also see that the proposition is enormous. I have toiled in these fields for too short a time.

The Best Things About Kabul

February 6, 2009 Living in Kabul has been rich beyond imagination. I often have trouble putting words to paper because so many sights, sounds, and tastes compete for air. Of the many things I love about this city, I offer the following which I will carry with me.

The greeting that meets me every morning when Shah Mahmood drives me to work: Roz-e khush, “have a good day.” Literally, “have a rosy day.”

Moroyhar kanar, or chAklEtA, hard butterscotch candies which the kitchen staff set out in small glass bowls every morning and place in each office in the compound where I work. The hard shell of the candy melts and gives way to a creamy caramel.

Abdul Qadeer “Istalfi” Carpet and Handcraft Store on Chicken Street, my favorite shop in Kabul. Abdul Qadeer sells carpets, chapan (also known as the “Karzai coat,” a mid-calf length purple and green silk jacket worn as a cape with the sleeves hanging free), pakol (a round, flat wool hat worn by men), gorgeous painted furniture made by Afghan refugees in Pakistan, silk and cotton tapestries. The shop is a maze of separate rooms; as soon as you think you have seen the last offering, there is another small room behind the next decorative curtain. Today I went to Abdul Qadeer’s shop with my friend, Tom. Abdul was willing to bargain with Tom because Tom came with mAdar, or “Mother.” (That's me!) I enjoy an elevated status in Afghanistan due to my tender age!

Nan, the best bread I have ever eaten. A loaf of Nan, a two foot long flat bread, can be bought at one of the dozens of street bakeries that dot Kabul’s commercial and residential neighborhoods. Indeed, Nan bakeries may be the Starbuck’s of Kabul, that is how close together they are found. Nan is baked on a blazing charcoal grill and sold hot. Breakfast, lunch, dinner, I never get tired of it.

The BGs as our bodyguards are known affectionately watch over all of us who live in the Guest House and work on the Rule of Law Project 24/7. There are 8 BGs, all young Afghan men dressed in natty royal blue blazers and packing heat! My friend and BG, Farid, is a born leader. Within days of my meeting him, Farid was offered a job as a security supervisor and left us. The BGs ride in the car with us to and from work and home and wherever we go on our day off, always sitting in the front passenger seat. All those years that my children competed for the front seat of the car by seeing who could shout “Shotgun” first, and now I know why. The BGs are no older than my two children. It is their job to get out of the car first, assess the setting, and then give us the nod to get out. The mAdar in me wants to take care of them. It hardly seems right that they should put themselves at risk when they are so young and have their long lives ahead of them.

The calico cat lives at our office. I heard her before I met her, basking in the sun on the terrace of the office, mewing at the top of her lungs as the lunch hour approached. No fool, this Afghan peshak, she has worked her charms on me and all but a handful of my colleagues as she makes her way from office to office to lounge on a comfortable chair, announce her hunger, or nuzzle up against a friendly ankle. I wish I could bring her home with me.

Meena, Salima, Modera, Kamila, Modera, and Razia, my young Afghan colleagues. Salima translates legal publications from Dari to English. She learned English as a child and in her free time teaches young Afghan girls English and math because, as she told me, she was lucky to have a family that encouraged her to get an education and many Afghan girls are not so lucky. Razia has her law degree and also works as a translator. Parwana (her name means “butterfly” in English), Kamila, and Modera are Cleaners at my office. Meena is a Human Resources Clerk. Not a day passes that I am not asked, “How is your daughter? How is your son?” Meena often greets me with “Hello, Mum, how are you? Your eyes are beautiful today.” Salima and I share an office. When I come in on a morning, she asks “How was your evening?” When we part at 4:30 PM, I say, “Have a nice evening,” to which she responds, “I wish you the same.”

I have become friends with a group of women law professors who are in Kabul studying Legal English in hopes of becoming sufficiently fluent to earn fellowships to study in the United States. Three times a week, I go to Kabul’s Safi Landmark Hotel where Anargul Mansouri, Nadia Noorzi, Noor Jahan Xousufuzai, Sekba, Fairida Qadiri, and Nadia Alkan are staying and we speak in English. I have learned from them what it was like to live under the Taliban when they were young girls. They were not allowed to attend school, and could not leave their homes. Nadia Alkan described those lost years as a time when her mind lay fallow but the seeds for her career in law germinated. Today she teaches on both the Law and Sharia Faculties at Kabul University. Three of these women are married to husbands selected by their parents. Until they married, they lived at home with parents, grandparents, in-laws, nieces, and nephews. As they became comfortable with me, Anargul asked with a twinkle in her eye, “Can we ask you personal question?” “Of course,” I said. “Did you have boyfriends before you married?” I owned up to one or two boyfriends and explained that it is our custom in the United States. They explained that boyfriends and dating are not a possibility in Afghan culture, and that is fine with them.

Dovecotes dot the rooftops of many homes in Kabul. On my first morning here, I awoke early to the call for prayer which sings across the city five times a day, starting at sunrise. Listening carefully, I discerned a competing sound. Cooing. I got out of bed and opened the curtains to see where the noise came from. There they were at eye level, cooing to their hearts’ content, a flock of doves issuing their own call to worship from their lofty temples atop the house next door.

Chicken Street

January 23, 2009 I woke up this morning to blue skies and sunshine. Kabul looked glorious out of my second floor window. Today is my day off and I welcomed the break from work which has kept me busy and has stretched me in good ways. First thing when I woke up, I had a Skype call with my brothers, my sister-in-law, and my Dad who live in Southern California. It was so good to see their faces on the screen and to catch up with them for the first time since I came to Kabul. I think my Dad was a little taken aback to see me full screen! It sure was good to see all of them.

My morning emails brought a card from Louisa from “The Office,” a television show we share a passion for. The card is a photo of Phyllis (aka Mrs. Bob Vance of Bob Vance Refrigeration) on her wedding day. That made me smile. I miss my children. The next email from Alex was brimming with good cheer about his senior thesis film and the Nietzch Factor, his Wesleyan Ultimate Frisbee team. A third email shared the great news that “Trouble the Water,” the extraordinary documentary film about Hurricane Katrina that Alex worked on as an intern two summers ago is nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Film. Big shout-out to Tia Lessin and Carl Deal from Kabul!

After brunch – Fridays we have brunch at 10 AM in the Guest House – of sausage and the most amazing soufflé-like pancake, I went off to Chicken Street with my friend, Belquis.

I had heard about Chicken Street before I came to Kabul. Carpets, furniture, tapestries, hookas, Karzai hats, chapans (vibrant colored Karzai knee-length jackets), lapis lazuli. You name it, Chicken Street has it.

Today was a lark for several reasons, the most exciting of which is that my friend and I were out together in Kabul without a bodyguard. (Shhhhhh!) We were in a safe area and we were in and out of shops. And we had a phalanx of 7-and 8-year old boys tagging along behind and in front of us, beseeching us to buy chewing gum, offering to carry our packages, and finally determining that they were our bodyguards. At one point, my friend noticed that we were the only women on the street.

We made our way in and out of the most extraordinary shops, each one a warren of small rooms offering feasts for the eyes. Carpets stacked floor to ceiling. Tapestries, silks and wool. Kilim saddlebags for camels. Karzai hats made of lambs wool. Karzai jackets --- chapans – of elegant green and purple fabric. (To be worn, I have it on good authority, with arms in sleeves for informal occasions and draped over the shoulders for formal occasions.) Carved walnut chairs, divans, tables, bed frames. (My friend, Belquis, is trying out one of the beautiful carved chairs in the photograph above.) Lapis lazuli carvings, rings, bracelets, and necklaces. Handblown glass in the most exquisite pale aqua.

All this and the small boys were still escorting us, waiting patiently as we entered yet another store, hoping against hope that we would acknowledge their patience with some form of material reward! We relented and purchased chocolate bars. The boys accepted them with smiles and continued to tag along after us.
Every shop keeper in every shop we visited offered us tea and sweets and led us up stairs to upper levels where carpets and saddlebags and chairs and tables and wall hangings are kept. We are invited to select items and pay now or pay next time we come back. Afghans give new meaning to the word “hospitality” by their words and deeds.

The colors, textures, carvings, finishes, threads, and patterns dazzle the eye. After the second carpet shop, the carpets and tapestries became a blur of reds, blues, golds, and creams. Silk and wool. Blankets made of camel hair and beads of lapis lazuli. My heart was set on two tiny tables, one red and one blue, with intricate folk designs painted on them. A multicolored bedspread embroidered in cotton. A woven wall hanging, a painted box, blue glass beads. For this, I paid the sum of $90 US.

The sun was still high in the sky at 2:00 PM when we returned to the Guest House. I was still feeling the freedom of walking down Chicken Street with my friend, not a care in the world other than a growing pack of young boys eager to please, hoping for baksheesh.

Tonight, I went to the Gandamack for dinner with my new friend, Liz, a beautiful Australian woman who has been here for several months and will be leaving on Monday to return to her home in Spain. This is the third restaurant I have been to since I’ve been in Kabul, and the drill is the same with each one. The restaurants we are allowed to go to are the “double door” restaurants. One enters from an institutional grilled and locked door streetside and crosses a dirt courtyard into a set of double doors. The first door is metal and it is locked. Liz has been there before so she knows to knock. We are viewed through a peephole and we pass muster. We are allowed into a tiny holding stall while we are either viewed again – or in the case of other restaurants, searched for firearms – and then the second door opens and we cross another courtyard and enter what is one of the most beautiful restaurants I have ever seen. White linen tablecloths, sterling flatware, bone china. Candlelight and wine glasses! Boo-yah! The menu offers Boston Climb Chowder and Trout Squeegey Style. (Don’t ask; I didn’t!) Liz has grilled chicken breast and I have Spinach Lasagna. The dinner is delicious and the conversation is wonderful. What a great day!

Every day I wish my children were here with me. I make mental notes to tell them about something I saw, heard, ate, even imagined. How to telegraph the colors, sounds, sights, smells, and tastes? This is too much experience for one person.

Images of Kabul

January 23, 2009 It has been two weeks since I have posted on my blog from Kabul. I have struggled to be faithful to my vow to write daily, but when the time comes to put pen to paper – or digits to keyboard – my head starts swimming with images: donkey carts, fruit peddlers, children hawking chewing gum, women in burkas sitting in the middle of the busiest streets in Kabul begging for money, Barack Obama taking the oath of office in Washington, DC, brought to me and thousands of elated Afghans courtesy of CNN.

Today is my day off – my “weekend,” as Kabul operates on a 6-day work week with Friday the designated day of rest – and I aim to catch up. I want to remember everything.

One day off per week is not enough, although at the same time, sitting around in the Guest House watching reruns of "Diagnosis, Murder" (Dick Van Dyke post-The Dick Van Dyke Show as a physician-wannabe-sleuth and an unknown bleached blond actor playing his son, the cop!) and first runs of "Tim Gunn's Guide to Style" is not that enriching. I have watched more TV here than I have ever watched at home. If I could master Hindi in a short time, I would swiftly become addicted to Bollywood serials because that is what plays on 80% of the channels on Kabul TV. These soap operas are marvelous, offering outrageous costumes, dance numbers, and outlandish makeup. I can almost follow the plot without a mastery of Hindi because the gestures are so extreme.

Since my last posting on January 8, I have had 2 weeks of Dari lessons and am now able to offer greetings to our Afghan drivers and bodyguards (who all know English, but I still want to try to converse with them in their language) and to shopkeepers. I realize that for the first week of my lessons, I was answering the “Salam aleikum”/ “How are you?” greeting coming my way with a hearty, “You are well, thank you, and so is your house.” Never mind! My learning curve is accelerating. To the warmly offered “Salam aleikum,” I now offer, “Waleikum salam, chEtor astEn?” And I receive a smile in return!

The images dancing in my head are disorderly and colorful. I have become a camera with a 360 degree lens trying to take it all in as I am always on the move in a vehicle, seldom on foot. Day to day, life between the Guest House and the office is fairly routine – if you consider coming home to Coq au Vin, Roast Beef and Yorkshire Pudding, and Tiramisu routine. Ali, our young Afghan cook, is a whiz in the kitchen. He cooks to the tastes of the American and Australian ex—pats who live in these quarters. We are provided lunch at the office every day, and that is an Afghan meal, most often a stewed meat, red beans, and the most amazing rice I’ve ever tasted, one day flavored with cardamom and cinnamon, the next day steamed with delicate strips of what I think is mango. Meals are always served with the local bread, Nan, which is a flat bread beyond description. I will miss my daily Nan when I leave Kabul.

Beyond daily life -- and, really, nothing is routine in Kabul – two days stand out. The first is January 17 when my colleagues and I were gathered at the 9 AM weekly staff meeting in the conference room at our office. Someone was giving a weekly report on his or her project when we heard an explosion. The noise caught everyone by surprise, even though the person speaking did not skip a beat, did not pause for a second. But the room fell silent and all eyes turned to the outside. There was no visible sign of an explosion – no smoke, no fire – but I could see that others were concerned, as was I. It was not long at all before we learned that a 22-year old suicide bomber had driven his car into a fuel tanker near Camp Eggars, the military base that houses the International Security Assistance Forces in Kabul. Casualty estimates varied, but it was reported that at least 6 Afghans and Americans were killed.

This was unbearably sad to me. All day, I thought of the families of those killed receiving the awful news. I tried to imagine living under this kind of daily threat. My Afghan colleagues seem inured to such tragedies. Since January 17, there have been other explosions and such threats loom daily. Afghans take this in stride. I do not worry and I do not feel unsafe. But my heart aches for all who have become accustomed to such violence.

The second day that stands out is Inauguration Day, a day that will forever in my heart and mind entwine Afghanistan and the United States. Inauguration Day was for me, and for my Afghan colleague Mustafa, the day that ‘democracy went to the top’ as he so eloquently put it. Afghans have high hopes that President Obama will turn his sights toward the Hindu Kush and make good on his promise to help Afghanistan. So do I.

Home Away From Home

January 8, 2009 Day Two of this extended holiday that frames my first week in Kabul! Afghans ordinarily work a six-day week with Friday as the weekend. This week, the powers-that-be declared that Wednesday and Thursday of this week would be work holdiays since Ashura, yesterday's Muslim holiday, fell on a Wednesday and Thursday is a half-day for Afghans anyway (but not for ex-pats!). So this is the second day of a three-day work holiday for me, and I have only been here one week! I am trying to hunker down in hopes of gaining some early mastery of my job, but I am tempted by the beautiful day outside and the views in every direction.

I am living in the elegant foreign workers' Guest House in the photo above while I work with USAID's Afghanistan Rule of Law Project. The house is spacious with three floors and a basement where we eat our meals. The second and third floors of the house are ringed with porches that offer dazzling views of TV Mountain in the near distance and the Hindu Kush in the background. My colleagues and my housemates are one in the same. We live together and work together. It's a nice group.

My office, pictured at right, was formerly a private residence. From what I am told, it is more typical of Afghan homes than our guest house as it (the office) has a spacious courtyard with space for a garden, whereas our Guest House occupies most of the lot it is perched on, with only a very small plot of grass for a yard.

I am the Performance Monitoring and Reporting Specialist for USAID's Afghanistan Rule of Law Project which brings together US lawyers, judges, law professors with their Afghan counterparts to rebuild and restore Afghanistan's Justice Sector. (Details can be found at http://afghanistan.usaid.gov/en/Activity.85.aspx.) I am responsible for preparing scheduled progress reports for USAID on the full scope of work accomplished weekly, bi-weekly, monthly, and quarterly. Our office is in another neighborhood of Kabul. We are driven there and back every day. Most of the staff are Afghan locals and kinder, more professional colleagues one could not ask for.

Kabul, Afghanistan

January 6, 2009 In the four days since I arrived in Kabul, we've had snow and two earthquakes which woke me in the night. As my room swayed, I racked my brain to remember my Southern California childhood training. Duck and cover? No. That's in case of a nuclear bomb. Stand in a doorjamb? I think so. It didn't come to that, but it was a moment.

I feel safe. It is a new experience being accompanied everywhere by a bodyguard, but I don't go many places outside of home and work. I spent yesterday, my first day at work, at a conference of law students, law professors, lawyers, judges, government officials. All of the women wear their heads covered. Men wore Armani suits and shalwar kamiz, capes, and turbans.

Although I receive “danger pay” (term of art!) for this job, this is far from a hardship post in many respects. My meals are prepared and served to me by skilled cooks. Last night's menu: fried chicken, roast potatoes, corn, bread pudding. Hamburgers and french fries the night before. My laundry is done for me; yesterday, my old frayed flannel nightgown was returned to me IRONED! I

I cover my head when I go out. At first, it seemed novel, but after a few hours of fidgeting again and again to make my scarf stay on my head, it became a great nuisance. At the legal conference I attended at the Safi Landmark Hotel in Kabul on Saturday, January 3, I watched the few women – law students, lawyers, judges – all of them in scarves. Not one of them fussed with her scarf, and it seemed to me that every scarf stayed in place except mine.

The contrasts are enormous. Palatial homes surrounded by high walls, next door to mud homes, both on unpaved dirt streets. After yesterday’s snow, Kabul’s rutted streets were mired in mud. Our skilled drivers traverse those streets like bumper cars, twisting and turning, brushing past daring pedestrians, darting into oncoming traffic which seems to part on cue. At night, Kabul traffic is a game of Chicken, writ large.

Street sights clipping through Kabul in an armored car: butcher stalls with slabs of meat hanging in the air. Bakeries with huge loaves of Naan in the window. Produce stands with stunningly beautiful arrangements of fruits and vegetables, placed with the hand of an artist. Eggplants, okra, oranges, apples, cauliflower, pomegranates, tiny lemons, enormous Clementines, cabbage, lettuce, leeks, onions. Purple, green, red, yellow, orange. Gorgeous. Children sorting through curbside garbage in search of soda cans. Goats nibbling on what is left of the garbage. A local bus with fringed windows and “Elephant of the Road” painted in scrolling letters across the front and side.

I am happy to be here.

To the Hindu Kush

January 1, 2009 Sal-I-naw Mubarak! Happy new year! I arrived in Kabul yesterday and have barely begun to sort through impressions from the last three days traveling from DC to Dubai to Kabul. One could hardly find a greater contrast than one night in Dubai and the next day in Kabul.

Women in Dubai were chic and glamorous, even in their black chiffon hijabs which cover them from head to toe, but do not cover their faces. In Kabul, many women seen on the street are covered in heavy blue burkas with a narrow slit at the eyes; that slit is covered with a net grilling. Young women cover their heads with scarves, but often wear jeans, high heels, and nail polish.

I traveled here with my friend Belquis who was born in Kabul, moved to the US in 2001 with her parents and siblings, and now works in Kabul. We had great plans of celebrating New Year's Eve in Dubai but were told by our hotel that the Government of Dubai had canceled New Year's Eve celebrations because of the strife in Gaza. Our hotel offered several dinner packages in the various restaurants -- all too pricey, even the package that offered a meal and all the soft drinks you could consume in the restaurant and later in the bar until 3:00 AM for $300 US. We settled for room service Mezzeh and a bottle of Chilean wine.

I have only glimpsed Kabul so far on the ride to my guest house from the airport. Early images: military police with Ak-47s; roadside vendors everywhere; huge glitzy Las Vegasy buildings that serve as wedding halls (a big industry in Kabul); donkey carts vying with newish cars for one of three lanes on the highway from the airport.

The guest house I live in is 3 floors plus a basement where we eat meals. The view outside my window is of private residences, one of them enormous and pink. Our meals are prepared to American tastes by Afghan cooks. Last night's dinner was roast beef, mashed potatoes, and green beans. The house is built in an ornate Asian style with many flourishes and curlicues. A terrace on the third floor offers a beautiful view of the snow-capped mountains that surround Kabul and make it the dust bowl it is. I have a big TV in my room with cable and satellite access (yesterday, I watched Indian Idol!).We are driven everywhere in armored cars with armed bodyguards. The guest house is guarded 24/7. But I am not worried. I feel very safe. The Afghanistan Rule of Law Project where I am working has a finely-tuned security operation.

The work week in Kabul is 6 days, Saturday through Thursday. Today, Friday, is the weekend. I am eager to get out and see more of Kabul.