Diary from Kabul

25-12-2011

Four Candles: I have just eaten soup with a fork, no kidding. This was not an issue of having no spoons, this house is not short of a thing. I ate it with a fork because it was the only practical way to eat this soup. It’s a head scratcher I know, but it’s not every day you are served a piping hot bowl of ‘zuppa di spaghetti’. A first for me, but having been bought up on Spag Bol this little poser was a cinch. I grabbed at a fork and in no time at all I was twirling with the best of them, slurping away until the spaghetti was no more. My bowl was still ¾ full of stock, so I did feel a little defeated, but let’s be honest, if forks had been made for soup they wouldn’t have invented spoons would they!

Table for One: I went to the Gandamack Hotel and Restaurant last night for a drink with a friend. I cannot mention his name because if his girlfriend reads this column, she will likely have him shot. So David and… oh darn it, I’ve gone and done it again. Sorry ‘Young Slow One with Eight Muslim Children’ as I call him. The good news David is that now she has read this, you won’t be having those 8 children after all, you will be having your spleen removed.

Anyway where was I? So David has been pursuing me for weeks now about contacts I have in Somalia. He is a photojournalist and filmmaker and he is desperate to do a piece on the worrying rise of the Al-Shabaab terrorist group in the Horn of Africa. I have made literally a phone call and sent a staggering email in my vain attempt to tee him up with the right people, but to no avail. David was very keen to go to Somalia for the first 2 weeks of January, in fact he was remarkably persistent, more persistent than is healthy. There is something quite unsettling about the way he was happy to spend his own money and risk what little life he has left by embarking on this Madness in Mogadishu. And the specific nature of the dates was alarming also, he seemed completely inflexible.

Last night he fixed me a stare that left me in no doubt that I have failed in some way, that our friendship is perhaps teetering on a precipice – a transgression had occurred, by me it felt. To lighten the atmosphere I asked how things were going with his girlfriend, and this is what he said. ‘Well ‘Old Man Who Runs Too Fast’, because you have failed to sort the contacts I needed in Mogadishu I now have to go to Goa on holiday with her for two weeks instead, so thanks for that, Somalia was my get-out clause, now I have to be all lovey-dovey on a bloody beach drinking cocktails and having sex’. Romantic Bastards these war photographers!

Home: I find myself in a curious space. My minder won’t walk with me anymore. My best buddy has left for a new life, and my other good friend leaves at the beginning of February, he hopes, to accomplish the same. Just about everyone else I know has left for the winter, they won’t return until March. My fine host is in India for Christmas, he left a week ago and does not return until the New Year. So I sit alone in my room writing, because I can’t easily leave the house and go and take photos. It’s an odd thing trying to work out where you belong. Most of my friends here want to find love and settle down but it’s an almost impossible place. Most want a home somewhere that they can return to, most just want stability and to be held. The signature human conditions still apply if you are a war photographer or a mother of two, we all want the same really.

I was trying to work out where my home is and I don’t know anymore. My father, who lived in Australia, is dead, my mother lives in France, my brother in Dubai, my sister lives 200 miles away from my hometown in the UK, someone else lives in my house – where do I belong now after this dismantling? I have a friend who believes that ‘home is in the arms of the one we love’. So I suppose for now I am stateless, which is not the worst, and if home is in the arms of the one we love, well so is much of the world I guess. And I am in no hurry for all these things, they will flicker into life when they are ready, but uncertainty sure can wear you thin. When you are younger the unknowing of each day is your appetite, it keeps you hungry, but as you get just a little older uncertainty is more erosive. And at this time of year it takes a bigger hold on you, it fixes you a stare and tells you not to neglect time.

My friends here are all leaving because they are 40 this year, and it’s time to start laying down some roots. It’s odd therefore that I got to 40 and dug all mine up, and I can’t remember where I put them. They say that ‘we live and die by our decisions’ but this is rarely true is it. Mostly we simply co-exist with the consequences, nothing more, nothing less. So I will do this for as long as I can, I am not neglectful of the freedom and opportunity that comes with it, the chance to start again, to resurrect and renew is also a blessing, but if home is truly in your arms, then one day I would like to come home!

Merry Christmas: It’s 2am here, and I really should go to bed, after all, today is not Christmas, it’s just another day in Afghanistan. So I guess I had better be up bright and breezy, and with a certain piquant relish – much to do. I wish you all a very happy Christmas, wherever you may be, and for those who really matter to me, may I please wish you peace and happiness, now and forever!

Picture of the week: Simply beautiful.