Islamabad

Today I travelled from Kabul to Islamabad. The distance in my mind was far bigger than the actual distance between these two cities. It's practically just hopping of the ground with a plane for a lousy half hour, and down you fly into the humidity of Islamabad. Touching ground in Islamabad immediately made me notice that though this city isn't necessarily better off compared to Kabul when it comes to security (remember Mariott?), it does look quite different from the Pashtu areas across the border. It's green, roads lack potholes, traffic lights switch steadily from green to yellow to red and back again, on the edge of the street are public parks where people enjoy a walk; further all streets are clearly signed with numbers (even though the numbers don't really follow much logic - they jump from 30 to 36 and back to 32...). There are even few women walking around (!) that don't wear headscarfs (!!). And yet, once you drive past the signboard that says "diplomatic enclave" you know that the place is actually far from normal. And then you also start noticing the check points. And suddenly you get suspicious when you see people not just walking around in these road side parks, but groups of ten to twenty men in traditional Shalma Kamizes sitting in a circle under a tree, talking about god knows what. It's somehow an artificial place, that has gotten in touch with the reality of the "other" Pakistan in the tough way over the past few years.
I will be here for only two days, starting up a cross border program for Afghan refugees living in Pakistan, jointly with colleagues from IRC Afghanistan. The aim is to identify employment for young qualified afghan refugees in Kabul, and thus creating some pull factors for them to actually go back to Afghanistan. Anyhow, I am sure with the deteriorating security situation on this side of the border, we will have plenty of people interested in returning to Afghanistan...

Back in Kabul

Over the past few weeks of being back in Kabul, I have received the same question over and over again, from people here and from people back home and from people god knows where in the world: "How is to be back in Kabul?"

I tend to answer with "difficult". Somtimes "weird". Sometimes I even get a bit more positive and get a "not too bad" out of my mouth.

All in all, seriously, it is not too bad to be back, largely because of the fact that I have decided to leave soon, towards the beginning of December. But saying that it feels good to be back would nonetheless be an exaggeration. After all what happened, I don't think that I can ever again travel to streets of Kabul with the same enthusiasm that I had before August 13th. Leave alone travelling through the country side. The simple thought of it makes me shiver.



There are good and bad sides to being back. The good side is that I could see few people again I really care about. The other good side is that I managed to spend a weekend in Hirat, which came close to a mini holiday with some work attached to it. It also feels good to see my staff members again, and to slowly work with them on restarting programs. I am also quite happy about the pomagranat juice which is sold in all coffees and restaurants these days. And to further increase my inner balance, I have resumed my yoga classes. Though not balanced yet entirely, I at least don't have to feel guilty any longer at night for not moving my lazy bones at all...

But there are also many things that make it difficult to be back here. One of them is the lack of freedom, which I notice much more now than I ever did before. For instance in this very right moment, I am stuck in the office because of an abduction alert, with the consequence that we expats are only allowed to travel in convoy which again means that I have to get three other workaholics away from the internetlifeline in our office (IRC does not grant us internet in the guesthouses...) in order to get moving. I know few internationals here in Kabul who frankly give a sh** about security, and think they are free. Personally, I don't think driving a bike in Kabul or walking through the streets would make me any more free. The bubble we live in doesn't burst just because of that. And we are not less observed or less foreign just because we put on local dresses. But anyhow, that's just my opinion.



Lack of freedom is just one thing that makes it tough staying here. Many other reasons exist as well. Not that I am eager to paint an all to negative picture of my mental state. I still enjoy being here, but, as mentioned earlier on, partly because I know that I am leaving soon. Some might ask, why bother coming back at all? There are simple answers to that: I would hate not being able to say proper good bye to people I care about, I would hate to leave my work unfinished, and it would be extremely difficult for me move back to Italy without any buffer and preparation time in between. Being back here for two more months after all gives me the time to think about what I really want. For the time being, thats many things. Travelling, endless trekking, maybe a bit of studying, maybe working again wiht NGOs, maybe changing career, maybe spending some time in paris, maybe x hundred. I am not really desperate about my future. If there is one thing I have learned over the past few years in Somaliland and Afghanistan, than that there is always a way out and foward, no matter how impossible it seems in the moment :)

My Afghan garden

Contrary to some western misbeliefs, development workers like me are not living in tiny huts, attempting to go native in their free time. Instead, we live in normal houses. My house here in Afghanistan is from the 60ties or 70ties, painted green, with huge thin windows that let in a lot of sun in the summer and a lot of freezing air in the winter. The inside is covered entirely by carpet floor, and decorated with furniture from the seventies. Some time ago an expatriate, who lived in this house before, most likely in a sudden urge for beautification, decided to paint the living room in terracotta color. Its not quite terracotta, though. In sunshine, during the day, it's bright orange, and at night, when the room is filled with the dim city power light, it has the color of skin.
The house also has few amenities such as a micro wave that only works on generator, as public power is too weak, and a top-loader washing machine. I never quite figured out how to use that one, though, as they don’t seem to be that common anymore in present day Europe.

But what’s best about this house is its garden. It’s not big, but after my half square meter balcony that belonged to my flat in Vienna, it seems like pure luxury. Since spring time I had plans to work on this garden. It started with buying seeds for flowers and spices, at the beginning of the year back home in Italy, when Afghanistan was still covered in deep, grey snow. While it had twenty degree minus outside, the seed sachets got dusty in a shelf in my room. When sun came out again, and snow freed up tiny grass in the garden, and the first dandelion had already stuck their yellow heads into the sky, I remembered my seeds. I was just about to get ready for getting them into Afghan soil, these little messengers from back home, when I was surprised by a watchman who turned out to have a hung on gardening. In his fluent Dari and my broken understanding of Dari he expressed his love for flowers. With a broad smile he continued saying gul! gul!, meaning flower, and pointing towards the ground. Feeling pity that he couldn’t wander around garden shops and get all kinds of exotic seeds, I handed over the packages to him. Since then, while in the garden roses started blossoming, I have been looking out for the remaining of my few Italian seeds. Slowly but steadily they made their appearance, in between the roses and all the other green stuff that grows in the garden. Slowly but steadily, parts of the garden developed into a jungle.

But it was only today that I finally took charge of the garden, being inspired by the English garden of my friend. Though I knew that my garden isn’t quite an English garden, I was still taken by the wild mix of organisms in my garden that opened up in front of my close inspection: while the pepper was twisting itself up the roses, basil and geranium had become best friends; in the meantime, tomato bushes where creeping along the ground. Looking closer, I discovered purple eggplants behind the roses, and could smell rosemary from some distant corner of the garden. What should I say? I guess we should earn a certificate for truly mixed agriculture! Its too dark to take pictures of our little garden Eden tonight, but will post some as soon as it gets daylight again...