Diary from Kabul

22-10-2011

I received an email a couple of days ago informing me that one of my best friends in the UK had been taken seriously ill soon after I had left for Afghanistan. I have never felt so palpably impotent, five thousand miles away. My son fractured his wrist the week after I left and I couldn’t be there for him. Of course the world keeps turning without you, it barely notices I suppose, and with the passing of time it will remember less and less. When you are just around the corner you assume a self-importance that is not commensurate with your real purpose. When you are five thousand miles away you become even less important than that.

My presumption is that over time I will be replaced somehow by others, by most anyway, each to their ‘new’ own. Those who felt a hole would open up, as my plane climbed over Birmingham and headed east would soon replace that importance with another. Time will be filled with new activities and others will take up conversation, inspiration will be garnered in new places and comfort and friendship will be super-ceded by a chance meeting with someone else. And I anticipated all of this, it’s how it should be, I never thought that I would matter that much in the end, and I am fine with that thought. After all I carry everyone with me in my heart but my ticking clock also has new companions riding upon the minute hand. But when your close and dear friend becomes seriously ill, you fleetingly wish that you mattered once more, that you could be the one to help, drop by with a bag of shopping or pick the kids up from school – but you can’t.

Projects: I have a head that is whirring and choking up ideas that tumble and slip from my mind so quickly and with such quantity that I don’t know where it all comes from. Time and space and emotional balance can be the ignition key that sparks such production, and I have those in abundance now. I have had occasional periods in my life when I have felt like a factory of thoughts and expression and creation, but these moments have always come and gone rather too expediently, but I am standing on the edge of an avalanche right now, and I hope it sweeps me along for just as long as it can. Freedom to think is the purest motivating opportunity that exists in a society that squashes and squeezes and crushes most of us, from dusk to dawn. We don’t even have time to dream anymore. It is coming up to midnight here but my fingers are still pressed to the keyboard, as they have been since 8am – I feel blessed. But with this freedom to think comes an equal responsibility to those who have allowed this possibility through their own goodwill to me. I had better not let them down, they would not deserve that.

German Films: Nothing to say, just wanted to type those words to bring a smile.

Mosquitos: I feel that I may be winning the battle. They may be dogged the Hun, but we have superior technology. I returned home from Flower Street yesterday and my room smelled like a Sixth Form Chemistry Lab, yellow and black tape was strewn across the landing - A Crime Scene. They say cockroaches are the only living thing that will survive a nuclear war; well I can tell you plain and simple, they wouldn’t have survived the ‘nerve gas’ they pumped into my bedroom. I can only presume that in my absence, a team of elite hand-picked weapons inspectors, clad head to toe in chemical warfare gear, must have cordoned off my bedroom, sealed all windows and exits and pumped lethal amounts of Agent Orange in there. I recoiled with the smell, but with nervous excitement I entered my room expecting to find a pile of insects equivalent to a booming ants nest on my floor. Well I’ll be buggered. CSI would have been hard pushed to find evidence of death, but eventually, close to the door, I found one, breathing its last in a final vain attempt to escape. It died in my arms. I have never had to calculate the size of an insect, but I would say on close inspection it was @&^%*@* tiny!

How could one insect the size of a grain of rice have wreaked such havoc upon my immune system? How indeed!

I expect this to be the end of the insect saga, and now maybe we can move onto bigger and better things.

VIP’s: Hilary Clinton is in town, it’s on the wires, mentioned in dispatches, even my sister emailed to tell me. As I sit here drinking black tea and typing away, two Black Hawks fly low overhead and descend towards the US Embassy. Is Hilary on board I speculate? If so I ponder, do you think she looked out of the window hoping to see me, it would only be polite, after all I looked out for her.

A brave new world: I shall soon be venturing into the world of multimedia and video, I have great plans for slideshows and short films that will enticingly illustrate different aspects of life here. I have things to overcome, like ability and experience, small stuff, and I wouldn’t expect to see ‘The Kite Runner 2’ any time soon, Kabul wasn’t built in a day (though they did manage to destroy the whole place in 30 years), but with short arms and empty pockets, I am prepared to spend literally pennies tooling myself up for this brave new world.

Dwarves: You never see a tall one they say. Well I beg to differ. Last night I went to a social gathering of nationalities and gender various, and I was, by some distance, the smallest person in the room. Some of the women were giants, but for their pale skin we might have called them Amazonian. Russ Meyer could have cast an entire movie within 6 feet of me. Well I kept a pretty low profile I don’t mind telling you, for fear of having my head cut off and the contents scooped out to make ‘Martin Soup’. I am the tallest dwarf here by a mile though!

Travel: Getting out and about in the right vehicle is everything in Kabul. If you get into the wrong car, you get arrested and the seats are slashed in search of bad things. Yesterday morning I got into the same Toyota Corolla from the previous arrest incident, and my driver took me on a ten-minute detour so that we didn’t go past the same police station in the same vehicle again, and with the same result. Get in the right vehicle however and you breeze across town as though you are on a rocket ship to the moon. This morning, by contrast I was in ‘mien hosts’ Mercedes with ‘special dispensation plaque’ upon the sculpted dashboard. Kabul is divided into two classes of roads, those that are choked and gridlocked by a million cars, and those that only people with ‘special dispensation plaque’ can drive along. This morning I was in the latter category, doubtless with Hilary and PK riding shotgun. Vorsprung durch Technik!

Next week: I did say that next weeks will be Secret squirrels from Helmand. Well I mean it this time!

Photo of the week.

Some pictures you can't explain, but Afghanistan is a textural paradise!