Diary from Kabul

19-01-2012

Coming Home: When I heard back in November 2011 that my daughter had landed the role of Mary Lennox in the Secret Garden at our local theatre, I started hatching a plan. I wasn’t going to miss it, but better still I wanted her to think that I would. I wanted to spring the biggest surprise of her life, and for my son also. Timelines take you on a course that close some doors and open others, but if you stick to them, see them through to fruition, then achievement becomes the centre of your world. I had been invited to many sumptuous locations for Christmas and New Year, Goa, New York, Bangkok, but I could not afford two trips and my mind was set on seeing my kids in January, so I settled down to the festive period in Kabul with a melancholy that was rife, but tempered – I would have my pain and anguish but I would have my prize. Such are the decisions of parenthood.

I received countless emails from my daughter for the weeks of rehearsals, I would email back minor motivational speeches, apologise obsequiously for not being able to make it. I would note comments she made on Facebook, ‘It’s times like this I wish my daddy was here’, and I would smile, if only she knew. So I told my kids that I was heading to Dubai to do some work and sort my visa, before heading back to Kabul. And as my kids presumed I was transiting back to Kabul on Tuesday 10th of January, I was on my way to the UK in a pre-arranged dawn raid, picked up from Birmingham airport and deposited, luggage and all in the basement flat of a friends house. My daughter’s opening night was the following evening so for 24 hours I had to lie low, not daring to venture out. I was just 200 yards away from my kids, having spent 3 months 5,000 miles away. It was excruciating but wildly exciting.

An hour before my daughter headed to the theatre for her big debut, I called her as though from Kabul, and gave her the best pep talk I could muster, all the time reminding her that it was costing me $5 a minute, I would have to be quick. I had sent flowers to the Green Room, so when she arrived for makeup a bouquet was waiting with the following message ‘I am so sad that I cannot be with you tonight, but I know you will be amazing. You have made me so proud, and remember that I will be holding your hand throughout. All my love Naddy xxx’.

My fourteen year-old son was going for a pre-theatre meal at a local restaurant, he didn’t know, but he would be dining with me. I arrived and snuck in the back door, and I could see him standing with his back to me, surrounded by family and friends. As I approached he clocked the faces of others and turned around. It’s difficult to describe shock, but I would imagine his face was the face of someone who has just discovered they are about to become an underage father, utter bewilderment, how could this be, it makes no sense! My son hasn’t hugged me for a year now, he is at that age, I expect and respect it. Well he held me so tightly and wouldn’t let go, and so did I, for fear of never holding him again, and all around I could sense the tearful whimpering of friends and family and diners – perfect!

We headed off to the theatre, part of a family waiting to be completed. My seat had been booked right at the back of the auditorium, a seat alone, whilst my family and friends were grouped together at the front. Whatever happened I did not want my daughter to see me and to be put off her stride during the performance, so I lay low in my seat, covered myself with my overcoat and just gloried in the success of it all. She was word perfect and amazing. From the opening seconds to the final curtain call she was never off the stage, and I just beamed my biggest Cheshire Cat smile, the solitude of Christmas was just an empty vessel now, it was worth it all. I dawdled to the stage door, she would be 15 minutes, and I hid behind a door waiting. I saw her exit and greet her mother and brother and closest friends, and I tapped her on the shoulder. Standard form by now, she looked as though her teenage pregnancy test had delivered shocking news, jaws extended, tongues hung and tears streamed, her and me and others. We held and hugged and wouldn’t let go. It was the perfect evening, every choreographed nuanced possibility had plunged into our ocean and the waves had crested our world for a while.

I took my kids out of school, a four-day weekend, but by Saturday morning my son returned to his X-Box, my daughter connected to Facebook and I have not seen them since. I have tried conversation but they are 13 and 14, and they like the idea of their Dad being in the same house, but really they like their digitally engineered world more. I suppose in a few months we will all jump through the same hoops again, we will lose tears and clutch heads against our chests, fingers will ruffle hair and cheeks will be caressed, but soon enough Jack will text and Megan will call and I will become a redundant effigy in the repository of their life. And I love that, it’s how it should be, this is their time to become adults. We will all soon enough be thick as thieves again, as we once were, when school has passed and University beckons, around about then I suppose. I think it was time for me to leave for a while, we are connected through our hearts, those threads don’t diminish, I feel their vibrations, if they need me they will call, I will be there always!

Cat Nap: This isn’t strictly speaking a diary entry from Kabul, although none of this is weeks is, so I am relaxing my rules and anything goes. Yesterday evening my kids and I watched as a neighbour screamed at her cat as it ran across the road and nearly became a component part of a tennis racket. Inwardly I was backing the car but at the last moment it swerved, the neighbour shuddered and the moggie leaked another life (I quite like cats but I do have my reservations). I mentioned all of this to the lady I am staying with in the UK and she recounted this.

She was driving home one summer’s evening when suddenly she heard a sickening thud. She slammed her breaks on and with a look of concerned confusion she reversed until she was level with an elderly couple who were standing on the pavement, staring at the black tarmacadam. In the road was a dead flat squashed cat. She wound down the window in horror and said to the couple ‘Oh my god, what have I done, I just didn’t see it, suddenly there was this bang, that’s all I know, I am so sorry’. ‘You mustn’t worry’ came the reply, ‘when we found it, it was dreadfully injured, and there was no way it was going to survive, and we couldn’t be bothered to take it to the vets, so we threw it under your car to kill it off properly’.

Well thanks for that!

Building Blocks: I sat with a desolate father the other day, disconsolate, appreciably fractious – not quite prams and toys, but someone had certainly torpedoed his ducks! I was on the Dreamliner to Dubai, and as is always the case, the guy you meet at check in, who ends up sitting next to you in departures, is also it turns out sitting next to you on a flight of 243 people – what are the chances. This is clearly a sign, you exchange numbers and by the time you touch down in the UAE you are godfather to their first-born. Leaving Kabul is your first meal after a hunger strike, and there is a celebratory mood on board. Between us we tonked our way through six tiny bottles of whatever in 40 minutes. Merry and relaxed we shared everything short of seminal fluid, and he cheered me with this little gem of innocence.

Lee, for that was is name, floats between Dubai and Afghanistan on an almost daily basis – last year he took 100 flights. He hails from Leeds, and has a 9-year-old son, and whenever he holidays he spends it with his boy! Keen to maximise the leave that he has, and desperate to share this time he said to his son, ‘I have a week off over Christmas, tell me what you want to do, where you want to go. Money is no object, we can go anywhere in the world, Barbados, Thailand, Disneyland, you name it and I will book it!’

And his son’s ambitious reply, ‘Manchester please Daddy’. So he got in his car and drove 40 miles down the M62 and spent 6 days holed up in a Manchester hotel as it poured outside, until the clouds broke and they hot-footed it to LEGOLAND, where given the keys to his dad’s wallet, he spent £1.62. Rock and Roll!