When this incredibly snarky piece by Rod Nordland came out in the New York Times, for example, I realized that I personally knew every project, and most of the individuals involved, that he described and so quickly dismissed. In fact, I had even taken part in one of them, the fashion show organized by Young Women for Change.

While Rod’s “article” was an overly-simplified and misrepresentative portrayal of art and private initiatives - not, in most cases, aid, as he claims – another recently published piece gets life in Kabul beautifully right.

Despite its dramatic title, “Kabul: Survival in a Suburban Warzone”, Ben Farmer’s description of Kabul Jan and, specifically, of the neighborhood that we and so many other expats share, resonate deeply. These lines especially,

Crowds of children tear around kicking footballs or playing hide and seek as watchful fathers stand at the gate. Tradesmen and labourers walk the potholed dirt streets and alleys shouting their wares and looking for work. At the weekend – Friday in Afghanistan – the men wash their cars and pack in their families to go visiting. The call to prayer, ice cream salesmen and American Black Hawk helicopters flying low enough to rattle the windows provide the soundtrack. 

And after this morning’s four-hour long attack on Kabul International Airport, this section as well:

Each [attack] follows a similar pattern. A quiet morning is shattered by a blast and often gunfire, leaving everyone craning to see where smoke is rising. Phone networks often jam as people seek assurances their relatives are safe and then people check local radio, TV and even Twitter to see where the attack struck.

One aspect of Kabul life that I came to admire was how quickly the city got back to work after attacks. Daily life refused to be halted and often resumed minutes after the shooting had stopped and the blood was hosed away.

Initial security reports suggested that the attack had been a rocket attack in Quala e Fatulah, but it was not us, and life did go on and is going on. Outside, there is the loud whirring of machinery as they finally – but slowly – pave our dirt road. From next door, there is the clunk of bricks being laid for the monstrosity of a poppy palace the neighbors are building. A few times an hour, the melody of the ice cream carts drifts in through the open windows and, every few hours, the Black Hawks make their routine flight over the city.

This is the reality that Ben Farmer describes and, the longer I stay in Afghanistan, the more I appreciate his type of writing. 12 years in, it’s too easy to resort to the headline-catching cliches and stereotypes that paint vivid, if inaccurate, portraits of life in this “suburban warzone.”

Because Afghanistan is more than a headline; for millions – including, now, for me – this is reality and these are the in’s and out’s of my daily life.

The other day, I went appliance shopping for a friend’s new apartment. We visited about 5 or 6 stores in to get a sense of options and pricing, and found everything from stainless steel refrigerators, lightweight plastic washing machines, to appliances covered in flowers. “Those,” my friend said, “are clearly Pakistani. They love flowers.”

As curious as the stylized flowers were, I was most excited to find Haier, one of the most successful Chinese brands to compete on the global market.

Noticing my interest, one shopkeeper confidently pitched, “Haier is a German brand – very good quality.” Another later tried to convince us that Haier  was Korean.

So at least it’s got one half of the brand recognition equation right. Haier is recognized in Afghanistan as a dependable brand… even if no one seems to know that it’s from China. Is this a win or a lose for brands like Haier? I can’t decide.

Zach Sobiech, who passed away yesterday from terminal cancer at the age of 18, knew how to live. Let’s be inspired by him and learn – or relearn – how to live as well.

Zach wrote “Clouds” as a goodbye song to his family and friends.

His story resonated so much that a number of celebrities created a celebrity tribute to Clouds:

“Fix Me Up”, Zach’s follow-up to his viral hit.

“I want to be remembered as a kid that went down fighting, and didn’t really lose.” – Zach Sobiech

I think it’s safe to say that he more than succeeded.

RIP Zach.

View from the Burj

I’m lying on a sofa bed on a high floor of the Burj Khalifa, staring out the windows at the sprawling metropolis at my feet. Here in Dubai, as everywhere else in my month away from Afghanistan, I am haunted by the same question: “What would it be like to live here?”

I was tempted in Philly, as I have never been before, when a friend told me that he used to rent a downtown 1 bedroom for about $750/mo. It was unheard of in any other major city on the East Coast, and since all I really need for my home base is the hustle and bustle of a large city, I momentarily wondered if Philly could be it.

I asked myself this also in Cambridge, MA when I met another friend at 1369 Coffee House, an old favorite of mine during college. What if I had stayed in the area after graduation? What if coffee with this friend could have been a weekly, rather than annual, thing? But it was an idle thought, since staying in Boston had neither been a real possibility nor a real desire for me.

I looked forward to it in Manhattan, which I had decided was the only U.S. city that could keep up with me. Manhattan was home to some of my oldest and best friends, and as we wandered the streets, stopping in at any coffee shop that caught our eye, enjoyed evenings at the Met and late nights in Meatpacking, I felt like I fit in the city. It was as if Manhattan and I were kindred spirits and our energies matched, or something. 

And yet, no place invoked that line of questioning more strongly than DC, where “What would it like to live here?” became “What would it be like had I stayed?” And so it is – nostalgia for the past trumps nostalgia for futures imagined, no matter how bright those futures seem.

DC caused such a strong reaction that I literally cried about it. Luckily, it wasn’t the snot-filled, red-faced, bawling type of cry, but rather the silent kind characterized only by a few fat drops that roll so slowly down one’s cheeks as to make you wonder if even the tears are too sad, too lethargic, to make any real effort.

It had been building for a while.

As our plane descended into Northern Virginia, we flew over lush green fields of farmland hedged by thin, winding slivers of interstate, nearly empty at this early morning hour. I thought of other early mornings on the Interstate after weekends away from the Beltway, listening to NPR, coffee in hand, feeling just as care-free as those car ads always promise. How long ago it all seemed now! I felt my breath catch and a knot form deep in my chest; in that moment, I could not remember why I had ever wanted to leave the United States. 

But the tears didn’t come then.

No, they waited for a more public space to make an appearance: the baggage claim. Carousel number 4 at Dulles’ International Arrivals Hall, to be exact. As the carousel hummed to life, I could feel that tightness dislodging from my chest – slowly, slowly, slowly – until finally one tear and then another spilled out of the corners of my eyes.

I was thinking of something my mother had once told me. Before I went to Afghanistan for the first time, she said, “You know that you can’t go back to a normal life after an experience like this.” At the time, her prediction was premature, and I brushed it off. I didn’t want to “go back” anyway. I didn’t want the normal life. In fact, much the opposite; many my life decisions have been driven largely by a deep desire to avoid normalcy.

But in that moment, in front of baggage claim, I no longer knew what I wanted, and the thought that I could not go back scared me. As was recently written in a blog post widely shared by expats…

“…you look at your life, and the two countries that hold it, and realize that you are now two distinct people. As much as your countries represent and fulfill different parts of you and what you enjoy about life, as much as you have formed unbreakable bonds with people you love in both places, as much as you feel truly at home in either one, so you are divided in two.”

I was hit by a deep nostalgia – for the life that I had lived before I left; for the life that part of me still hoped to return to; and for the lives that I would be missing, now, no matter what country I was in. 

But this year, as I think about all of the unforeseen roadblocks, challenges, and big and small victories, this one by celebrated journalist Robert Krulwich comes to mind. Though it was delivered to a graduating class of journalists, it’s incredibly relevant regardless of your field:

Think about NOT waiting your turn.

Instead, think about getting together with friends that you admire, or envy.  Think about entrepeneuring. Think about NOT waiting for a company to call you up. Think about not giving your heart to a bunch of adults you don’t know. Think about horizontal loyalty. Think about turning to people you already know, who are your friends, or friends of their friends and making something that makes sense to you together, that is as beautiful or as true as you can make it.

The world, and the path to success, has changed. Are you changing with it?

We don’t have a commonly used equivalent of “TIA” in Afghanistan – at least not one that is so pithily expressed in three letters – but the concept of accepting the absurd as normal exists here as well. From the way the windows rattle under the twice-daily flights of ISAF helicopters to the horrendous traffic jams where cars, humvees, push carts, and the occasional donkey all vie for space in the poorly planned streets, definitions of normal change in Kabul.

But lately, I’ve had some experiences that are, if possible, even more “This is Afghanistan” than typical. These include…

1) Falling into an open sewer

Kabul’s streets are notorious for being mostly unpaved, pockmarked even if paved, or both unpaved and pockmarked with giant ditches. Most of them also have open sewage ditches next to them that, unfortunately, do not lead to any sort of sewage system.

This sewage ditch is empty. The one I fell into was, alas, not.

And as I was walking through Pul-e-sur, a neighborhood on the Western side of the city , I stepped too close to a sewage ditch, slipped, and suddenly found myself up to my thighs in a noxious-smelling mixture of shit, run-off, and unidentifiable chemicals. I scrambled out as best as I could, but I could not rescue my shoes from the brown-grey slime, and so I stood, alone on the side of a busy road, shoeless and covered in excrement, as my friend and mardham (male companion) went off in search of some temporary footwear… 

Supposedly, this is common for Kabulis that must daily face the obstacle course that are the city streets. Even so, when I told my driver about this episode the next day, he laughed so hard that he had to pull over.

“Has this ever happened to you?” I asked. He shook his head, guffawing the whole time.

2) Getting caught in barbed wire

Concertina wire, here in front of the Queen’s Palace looking out to the King’s Palace.

Security measures abound in Afghanistan, from armed guards to police checkpoints to Jersey barriers to blast film, but perhaps nothing is quite as ubiquitous as concertina wire. Around wall perimeters to discourage robbers, sitting on roads to block off certain areas, and even – sometimes – in the middle of otherwise perfectly normal-looking courtyards.

And so it was today that, at a friend’s compound, I stepped too close to a chest-high set of coils and found my shirt  stubbornly wrapped around a blade of wire. Luckily, the shirt was baggy – and somehow, after careful extrication, in one piece.

3) Making an appearance on the Taliban’s official website

But perhaps none of these missteps – literal or otherwise – are as “This is Afghanistan” as being featured on Shahamat, the Taliban’s official website, and not for model Islamic behavior.

In a traditional design. More photos at http://buff.ly/16BxLKs

In February, I had the honor of opening a fashion show featuring both Afghan women’s designs, as well as (almost) all Afghan models. The show received a lot of press both internationally as well as in country. The articles, photos, and videos on BBC Persian and BBC Pashto, however, caused a number of problems for the show’s organizers and models, including unknown gunmen that followed us to the show’s location, accusations of prostitution by hardline Islamist Noorin TV, and outcry and threats on Shahamat…

I found out about my Shahamat feature from a close friend who himself made the Taliban blacklist for organizing the Afghan Ski Challenge. Over a cup of chai, we joked that, to make it harder for them, we should never appear in public together.

Dubious distinctions all and – with the last at least – potentially dangerous. But in Afghanistan, there is too much to worry about if you start and, besides taking more security precautions, what else can you do but accept, with a big roll of the eyes, a sigh, a shrug, or a knowing smirk, “This is Afghanistan”…?

The light-filled stairway

Today, there is carpet. Yesterday, stair runners. And a few days before that, fully functioning bathrooms.

I walk through my new home – now painted, carpeted, and cleaned – and a deep delight bubbles out of the pit of my stomach until it bursts into an unshakable grin. It’s absurd just how content, how at home, and how natural I feel here, in the middle of this country at war – or so I’m told, for it depends on whom you ask – and this city where there was another suicide attack just this morning. 

It feels incredibly trivial for me to be so consumed by setting up this house – and writing about setting up this house. Wouldn’t my time be better spent trying to make sense of the myriad political parties, catching up on the latest in the peace talks with the Taliban, reading the report about civil society development a friend just sent, or – at the very least – working on one of my two intensive should-be-full-time-on-their-own jobs?

Or – if we wanted to keep it house-focused – there’s also plenty to concern me. I could still fume, as I did this afternoon at finding out that I had signed a lease in a language I did not read that committed me to paying 10% more than agreed upon each month, because I trusted my Afghan business partner, who forgot to double check what we were signing. I could be endlessly frustrated with the overall incompetence of most of my staff – other than the hala [auntie] that cleans even the objects that I forgot I had. 

A pillow corner, just missing a rug

On the day I moved in, for example, I went to the house with all of my things to find that the chawkidor [door guard] had decided to go home for the night and not tell me, taking with him my only key and then, when I decided to give him a second chance the next day, promptly lost the key and required me to let him in. Meanwhile my current one leaves me the hardest jobs – like climbing up oil drums and metal chests into the attic to put pots and pans to catch the roof’s leaks – while warming himself in front of my electric heater with hot chai and telling me, “Bohatarique da Afghanistan hastem [It is because we are in Afghanistan]“, whenever I am unhappy about his or the workers’ work.

Uf. But there will be time – and opportunity – enough for fuming and frustration tomorrow.

The shopkeeper packages MY cotton

Tonight, here I am, lying on this custom-stuffed toshak [mattress] for which I drove out to the cotton market, stuck my hand into several bags of thick white fluff to feel for optimal softness, chose 16.5 kg of the more reasonably priced (and only minimally less soft) type, haggled, left a shop, started the process anew, haggled some more, chose a toshak cover, and hired a man to stuff the chosen cover with the chosen 16.5 kg of well-priced but less soft cotton.

Here I am, admiring my moody purple ceiling and my much negotiated for kilim rug for which, I am proud to say, I paid local and not expat prices. Here I am, thinking about all of the furniture to be bought and pinning and pinning my home decor ideas like crazy. Here I am, proud of the visible progress that I have made since moving in three weeks ago. Here I am, confident that whatever absurdities sure to come my way tomorrow, I can take it because you know what? I already have.

Here I am.

Afghan Stars

She has alabaster skin dotted by delicate freckles, big brown eyes, and a quick tongue that sends the girls into fits of laughter. She, along with her sister, adopt Fara and I almost as soon as we sit down in the then-empty soundstage. In the long hours of downtime before and between the shooting of the semi-final episode of Afghan Star, Afghanistan’s answer to American Idol, the pair of them keep us entertained.

Mostly with questions. Where am I from? How long have I been in Afghanistan? Am I married? Do I have a boyfriend? Why don’t I have a boyfriend? Who is my favorite Afghan star? What do I think of Afghan men? Do I want to meet their brother, who is a doctor?

“He’s different,” she promises, “smart and progressive and bishyar maqbul hast*. You will like him.” She pauses, “And besides, if you like Afghanistan so much, isn’t it good to marry an Afghan and stay forever?”

And later, “Can I invite you to my home?” she asks, excited but suddenly bashful. “You can meet my brother. You can meet all of my brothers.” She raises her eyebrows mischievously, and I laugh.

Charming, bold, and vivacious, she seems as much an Afghan star as the contestants on stage before us.

The Problem with Husbands

It is before a big family dinner, and the women are gathered by the bukhari**, comparing bolts of recently purchased cloth that tomorrow will be transformed into outfits. The three men present – the husbands and fathers – are on the far side of the room, lounging with their feet stretched out and their chai and snacks before them. The many children are playing a shrieking game of tag around us. But for all intensive purposes, we women are alone and talking openly. 

“It’s good that you do not have a husband yet,” one of the women tells me. “Men only bring problems.”

“And Afghan men are the worst!” Another chimes in.

They chatter in rapid-fire Dari, and I am made to understand, via their accompanying hand gestures, the smelliness, infidelity, and troubles of having a husband. I glance over at their men, and my friend, the host, catches my eye, shrugs, and grins indulgently. What can you do? He seems to ask.

Later, after dinner, we are lounging around in a food-induced coma. Talk turns to 2014 and everyone’s plans. “Eileen says she will stay in Afghanistan.” My friend informs everyone.

One of the men roars with mirth, “You stay in Afghanistan and I will go to the U.S. in your place.”

His wife quickly jumps in, “No, I will take her place and she can have mine – my life, my tazkeera, even my husband. How about it?”

Laughter all around – with the loudest coming from her husband.

Small Acts of Resistance

We are speeding through the night, six of us jammed into a small red sedan. Western pop music is blaring through the stereo, and as we approach a police checkpoint, Nabil taps on the breaks to the beat of the reggaeton song playing. One of the ANP*** shines his flashlight into the car, and seeing five women inside – four of us stuffed into the backseat and one, her headscarf defiantly down, in the front – he waves us on.

Nabil says something in Dari that I don’t catch but Benazir, who’s sitting half on me and half next to me, hits him playfully in response and the other women laugh.

A small gesture that would go unnoticed in any other context, but in conservative Afghanistan, where five unmarried young women and one unmarried young man should not be together period, it’s a small gesture of resistance.

The song changes and Shakira’s strong voice belts out,

“Cause I’m a gypsy, but are you coming with me? I might steal your clothes and wear them if they fit me.

I never made agreements, just like a gypsy. And I won’t back down, cause life’s already hurt me,

And I won’t cry. I’m too young to die. If you’re going to quit me. ’Cause I’m a gypsy…”

Benazir is the only one that knows all the words, but the rest of us sway along, connecting deeply to the lyrics. “This song is my favorite!” She says feelingly at its conclusion, and I wonder at their resilience. Who are these women, and how have they managed to maintain their free spirits and joie de vivre here?

And perhaps more importantly, how many more women like them are out there, resisting in their own small ways?

–

*Bishyar maqbul hast: He’s very handsome.

**Bukhari: an Afghan metal fireplace used to heat homes in the winter. They are typically filled with sawdust, coal, or wood, though the word “bukhari” has also come to refer to any heater, including electric heaters.

***ANP: Afghan National Police: 

• “At the UN-Sponsored Internet Governance Forum, Where are the Start-up Folks?” for Venturebeat
• “Humor Finds Its Way In Lost Translation”, first published in the NY Times At War blog, and then reposted in Afghan Scene 
• “The Entrepreneurial Spirit Thrives in Bamyan”, for non-profit BPeace, which supports entrepreneurs in post-conflict countries

One moment I was on the phone, trying to get the last leg of directions to a friend’s house, and then the next, three punches were colliding with my face.

The man grabbed my phone, but I held on. I must have screamed because the next thing I knew, he was running away. The group of young men – boys really – that stood, watching, on the opposite street corner ran after him. In my muddled state of mind, my immediate thought was that, as good Samaritans, they were in pursuit.

And then I stopped thinking, and I too ran.

–

The night before the failed mugging, I sat in N and M’s living room and we discussed the lack of petty crime in Kabul. An older couple, they had lived in Afghanistan for the past six years. N worked in Russia and Kosovo previously, and M joined him at some point from China.

“The currency changers stand in the streets all day with a thick wad of 1000Af bills in one hand and 500Af bills in the other, and no one touches them,” N said. “It’s because they’re part of the community.”

“And in the meantime,” I added, “You have a higher chance of getting shot in some neighborhoods of Chicago than you do here.”

It was a strange irony about life in Afghanistan’s capital city. Plenty of things were potential threats, from kidnapping to traffic accidents to harassment by the security forces to the occasional suicide bomb and large-scale attacks. But mugging? Not something that we worry about on a daily basis.

I would remember this conversation later, taking deep, shaky breaths after I had stopped running.

–

I can’t decide if the young men that attacked me were true criminals or teens that jumped on an easy target.

They were terrible at their attempted burglary. There were six or seven of them, and yet only one of them came for me. He punched me – two times to the left of my face and then once to the right – and grabbed the hand that held my phone, but when I didn’t immediately let go, he fled.

It could have been much, much worse.

He could have punched me again, or broken my wrist to get at the phone. He could have pulled out a knife. He could have had one of his companions, or all of them, join in the attack. The closest one was only ten feet away, and I would have been helpless then, 1 against 7 or even 1 against 2.

Instead, I yelled into the phone, “Oh my God, I’m being attacked!” and he ran.

I was in shock and not entirely sure what shocked me most:

1. That this happened less than 100 meters from the NDS guards on 24/7 watch outside of Asaddullah Khalid’s guesthouse (where the NDS Chief was wounded last month.)
2. Or that, somehow, I still had my phone in my hand. (And a good thing too – that I wasn’t completely alone was the only thing that kept me from going to pieces.)

–

There’s another thought that I’ve been turning over in my mind.

Maybe they were criminals and they targeted Afghan women. Maybe they thought that I would be another easy victim. Maybe they were surprised that I did not fall to the ground upon the first blow. I hate this thought, and I hate that they are still out there, but the more that I think about it, the more likely this seems. After all, there were some weird moments leading up to the attack.

Two boys walked past me as I was on the phone in front of what I thought was my friends’ house. (“You’ll know you’ve found our house when you go XXX past the the NDS jeep,” my friends had said, “you can’t miss it.”) The boys stopped not five feet to my left and, after a few moments of listening to my conversation – in English – they made a call themselves. I remember hearing one of them saying “Bya, hala bya,” to an invisible someone on the other end of the line, “Come, come now.”

At that moment, the parked jeep that I had mistaken for the NDS vehicle started up. It revved its engines and blinded me in its headlights, and then it sped away.

As if that was their cue, the two boys split up. One of them stayed behind me as I walked away, and the other walked a little ahead of me and to my left. It was around then, I think, that the attacker came up from behind and started hitting me.

He must have been the one that they called.

–

As I write this, it is the morning after and I’m back home, safe and sound with nothing but a throbbing jaw to show for the incident. Thankfully, there aren’t any bruises yet, though I suspect they might make an appearance later.

I am incredibly lucky that nothing else happened. I run through the scenarios in my head – if they had been smarter, or more prepared, or had more sinister intentions than the smartphone that I had in my hand…

This incident served as a much-needed wake-up call. I’ve been too lax about security, and though I still believe that Kabul is not an inherently dangerous city by mere virtue of being in Afghanistan, and that petty crime is uncommon here, I need to be more careful.