The other day I walked for over an hour through the city to get to a friend’s house. On one very muddy and very empty side street a young boy on a bicycle approached, and as he rode past his shoe slid off his foot (Afghans tend to fold down the back of their shoes and slip them on, probably because of all the putting on and taking off we do coming in and out of every building). He got off the bike and was hopping on one foot back to the shoe, while holding the bike. “Komak?” I asked (literally “Help?” but it connotatively means “Do you need help?”), and walked over to the shoe, picked it up and brought it to him. He had stopped hopping to watch me. I put it on the ground facing him and he slipped it back on with a somewhat embarrassed smile and a “Bakshish bâshen,” or “Pardon me.” I said it was no problem and bid him a good night. He walked off looking over his shoulder at me.

As I turned around to continue walking to my friend’s house, I noticed there was a Kuchi woman sitting next to one of the houses. I hadn’t noticed her before, but she had seen everything that had happened and looked at me with a very inquiring gaze as I walked by.

By and large, touching people’s shoes is something only children do for their parents’ house guests. The guests remove their shoes and walk indoors, and while they’re eating and drinking the children of the host arrange the shoes back into neat pairs facing away from the door, so guests can easily find and put their shoes back on as they’re leaving. So what I did was pretty uncommon even for Afghans—but a foreigner grown-up stooping to help an Afghan boy is definitely not an every day sight.

Then, last night a little after dark, I was walking home from another friend’s house when a boy wiped out on a bicycle across the street from me. Like most Afghan streets after dark, it was basically empty. I quickly walked across the street, asked if the boy was okay, picked his bike up and asked him again if he was okay (he was holding his arms in a way that said ouch but it was too dark to see what the problem was—seemed like a painful scrape). He insisted he was okay, took the bike back and walked it back in the direction he came from, possibly his home.

Again, as I turned to cross back to the other side of the street, I looked and there was a man standing in his doorway watching the city go dark, as I have seen a lot of Afghan men do around dusk. It had been too dark to see him before, but there he was, chilling on his “porch” so to speak, except that those don’t exist here and he was just standing next to his door.

For me both of these acts were absolutely nothing, with the point of the story not being to congratulate myself on a couple of average acts of common courtesy.

For me the point is the people I hadn’t seen. I thought the street was empty when I chose to lend a hand—but as soon as I finished helping them I saw that there were others, watching what was going on.

What if I had chosen differently? I’ve been told I look like a pale Afghan, but I don’t walk like Afghans (learning, but it’s not totally convincing yet) and although my pronunciation isn’t bad, I still don’t speak completely like a native speaker, even with simple sentences. The people watching would have seen a young, able-bodied foreigner passing by children in need without lifting a finger to help. As it happened, by grace they saw what I always hope people see in me: Love. Maybe simple love, maybe small love … but love nonetheless.

Just a reminder to you and me about the tree falling in the forest. Make it fall with a good sound, even if you think nobody is listening.

This entry was written by admin, posted on January 21, 2012 at 3:29 pm, filed under City, Hometown, Khaana, Language, Nature, Photography, Teaching, TeamWork, Transit and tagged Bicycles, bikes, cycling, dari, Panasonic DMC-GF1, Photography, shoes.

You have good days and bad. Sometimes the good days are really good and sometimes the bad are really bad. Like last night.

My teammate and I were hanging out with an Afghan guy, and I was having a “Wow, I’m suddenly dumbstruck even though I know all the words” moment. Sometimes this happens—my brain and mouth both give each other the middle finger, and I’m sitting here looking an idiot even though I understand exactly what’s being said.

(This tends to happen around foreigners way more than if I’m just with Afghans. Perhaps another reason why total immersion is better than anything else.)

So anyway, they started talking about this one time when a car was trying to cross a deep stream and another guy we know stuck his hands out of the windows and joked as if they were paddles or oars.

I was listening to the story and could tell that neither my teammate nor the Afghan guy could remember the word for paddle or oar (maybe the Afghan guy could, but, assuming my teammate didn’t know it, he was just describing what it was like: “The little wood you push the boat with …”).

So, after twenty minutes of prior silence, I enter the conversation with a single word: “Pâru.” I had learned it in class. Ninety-nine percent of the time pâru means “manure,” but depending on the context it also can mean “oar/paddle.” I did not learn why these two very different objects share the same word, but I did learn that that’s just how it is.

Surprised, both of them congratulated me on my expert knowledge of naval nomenclature—and this in a mountainous desert, landlocked, where literally probably the biggest aquatic vessels in or owned by the country are the half-dozen swan-shaped fiberglass paddle boats, just big enough for two tourists each, floating on the beautiful but small lake in Bamiyan.

For a second I beamed with joy. Then I realized that I hadn’t been able to conjure up a single respectable sentence until an obscure bit of dusty terminology from the “Don’t Even Waste Your Time” section of the dictionary was semi-needed, and even then I didn’t even contextualize my object with a humble “It is.” I just let it out like so much, well … pâru (the first meaning).

And then, while the two grown-ups continued talking, I stewed, and thought hard, and generally focused exclusively on just one specific topic, that being whether all this book-learnin’ is really helping me out as much as I’d once dreamed it would.

A while later the conversation turned to my Dari class, so (again, fumblingly, because it was still a Bad Dari Day) I voiced my new-found feelings on the subject: “Fekir mekunum ke dars shâyad ma-ra komak na-mekuna. Mesle … chiz … i durâst nes: Bare me gap zadan besyar mushkel as, ne? Lâken, chera pâru mefâmum?!!” I think that maybe class isn’t helping me. Like … hm … this isn’t right: For me speaking is really hard, no? But, why do I know paddle?!!

Both of my friends busted a serious gut. And then I did, too. I mean, we were crying laughing so hard. I had a suspicion it would be funny, but it got a lot funnier once I actually said it. (And yes, I did say it right, but in context it was just funnier than I thought it would be.) When I left our Afghan friend said I should come over and practice with him whenever I want.

So, yes. Sometimes, on bad days, I speak Dari like a pretentious six-year-old savant with a bow-tie and XXL glasses who reads the dictionary too much: “Uh … uh, hewwo? Yesh, hewwo. So, ah, anudda wowd fow caw … um … ish, ah. Yeah. Automobiwe.”

But at least I got the biggest laugh of the night.

And I’ve decided I’m dropping out in two weeks. Can’t keep a good dog down. Can’t keep this crazy cat in school. It’s time to get all Pink Floyd up in here.

This entry was written by admin, posted on January 16, 2012 at 10:14 am, filed under Culture, Language and tagged 35mm, dari, journey, Language, learning, Pentax K1000, Photography.

Yesterday was pretty average for me. Not only did nothing super-exciting happen, but also some normal, ho-hum type things which were supposed to happen did not. In Afghanistan that’s average, more so than in America. Everything is inshallah here, nothing is certain, most things are assumed not to go as planned. At the same time, there’s a ton of joy to be found in the quirkiness of life here. So, being that as it is, I thought I’d share an average day to give you an idea of what (these days at least) it’s normally like for me. I’ve bolded every other entry to make it easier on the eyes:

• Alarm at 6:45am. Super cold, because I stopped using the diesel heating stove (bukhâri) two days ago due to a bad amount of smoke kickback and haven’t had the chance to fix it. I snuggle my now lukewarm water bottle and snooze.
• Get out of bed at 7:15. Put on peran tumbân (Central Asian-style pants and shirt). I’ve gotten up too late to have time to boil water, so I grab my big thermos and pour some warmish water (boiled last night) over the pretty gnarly instant coffee I’ve chucked into a small toughened glass mug (basically the only drinking device of Afghanistan). Chug it between rubbery bites of a cold-hardened Clif Bar. Work mornings are not exactly the sweetest thing here in the wintertime. Yada yada, brush teeth; grab my language-learning picture book and a plate with which I was entrusted by a restaurant yesterday for pilao-to-go and throw them in a plastic shopping bag (basically the only stuff-transportation device of Afghanistan; you even see people making international flights with their stuff in untied plastic shopping bags, Wal-Mart style); throw my jacket, scarf, hat and shoes on; check cash; leave and lock the door.
• At 7:40, say my usual salâm alekum, sob ba khair, khub asten, jân-e-jur, sehatman, mânda nabâshen, shao khub ter shud, khâ, daftar merum, roz-e-khush, bamân-e-Khudâ to this property’s day chaokidar before leaving the gate. Walk a few blocks to the big street. Grab the first taxi in the cue. By now these guys know where I usually go in the morning, and the price is always the same, so I just get in and start talking. Today it was Nasir Ahmad with his son Mustâfa in tow (cute kid, about two years old, standing up on the backseat, and I shouldn’t have to mention that he’s not even close to a seatbelt).
• Arrive at office at 8:00 sharp and share a few greetings with my four female Afghan colleagues to whom I teach English in the mornings. We haven’t quite gotten to “don’t end a phrase with a preposition” (to whom I teach English v. whom I teach English to, etc.) … we’re more on the “Okay, you said, ‘I am, ah, living in the Afghânistân country, this is, ah, I am, ah, liking in the—shâr chi mega? khâ—city?’ and that’s good—that’s good … just needs a little work” stage. But it’s getting better. The picture book helps provide material. I think part of the issue is that the women only have time for 30-minute classes, and their time slot for those classes coincides with a private Dari lesson I have twice a week, limiting their classes to two or a maximum of three times weekly. So basically they aren’t learning much. I can hardly get a proper pronunciation exercise going before they have to leave to deliver their pregnancy health trainings to women in villages (not that I’m complaining about babies surviving birth, but … ya know). Today we decided we’d try to meet from 11am-noon three times a week, but then they rescinded their part of the bargain on the legitimate basis that they often have extra work right before lunch. So I’m not sure how we’re going to proceed, but something’s gotta give here. (And it ain’t gonna be my private Dari lessons, because learning Dari is my primary responsibility these days.)
• From when the women leave for the villages until around 9 o’clock, check work emails and chat online. Drink tea.
• Roughly 9am, my male colleagues arrive. We get the day started with some casual chats about random things. The topic of today is a bit out of the ordinary: what happened yesterday to one of our female foreigner friends as she was walking home. A motorcycle with two guys came up behind her and the passenger snatched her purse, which also tore off her headscarf. Apparently she also was dragged or at least fell down hard enough to bloody her knees; and, on top of the general shame associated with being publicly mugged and knocked down, she also had to walk the rest of the way home with no headscarf, which is (perhaps?) the American equivalent of … well, actually, there is no equivalent. Maybe sitting through a church service with no pants on? I don’t know. It’s pretty hard to approximate cross-cultural analogies between these two countries, being as different as they are. Suffice to say that the experience was less “kind of embarrassing” and probably closer to “truly humiliating.” So that was the talk of the morning. Not exactly normal, but not exactly unheard-of, either.
• Leave at 9:45am to take care of some things before Dari class this afternoon. First, drop by the restaurant whose plate I’m carrying. Return it and inform them I’ll be taking another plate for lunch—”I have guests for lunch, I will come back for qâbeli [that is, pilao] and perhaps take another amânat.” Given that amânat is kind of an “upper Dari” concept, I doubt people throw it around as much as I do, but I kind of like the ring of it as it leaves my mouth. The meaning’s pretty good, too. Not just “borrowed thing,” but “entrusted thing.” There’s no interest, debt or negotiable return policy associated with amânat—just the imperative that it be returned timely and in good condition. There’s no “Hm, should I wash this plate or not? I mean, it’s a restaurant after all, so don’t they wash their own dishes? And do I really need to bring it back today? They probably have a lot of these …” There are no questions. You thoroughly wash it, and you quickly return it. No thought. Why? Because, while it may look like a random, old, well-used plate from a hole-in-the-wall qâbeli joint, it’s not. It’s amânat!
• Continue walking to the crowded, noisy lelomi (second-hand/thrift zone of the bâzâr) where I’m meeting my Kiwi friend to pick up our new peran tumbân. I’m a few minutes early, so I head back into the tunnels-within-alleys-within-paths-within-tunnels-within-alleys-within-alleys maze that makes up the hidden parts of the lelomi. It’s quiet back here, and shaded, as the awnings of each shop overhang those of its neighbors. And it’s tight: if you’re passing a fellow shopper, you have to lean into the piles of blankets and sweaters to make room. This is usually where you find the good stuff, and it’s usually cheap. For example, the nice navy blue and gray sweater vest I bought today, which goes well with my desaturated-green clothes. The dukândâr quoted 50 Afs, which is roughly $1.03 these days. I could tell he was up-charging me a bit (not a good liar, this guy), but I mean, I really don’t care. I’m not going to argue this poor guy out of pocket change less than the equivalent of an American quarter. So I bought it, and I’m already wearing it. No washing needed. The bâzâr is actually pretty clean. I know this is me saying this and I do have certain unique standards about cleanliness, but really—it just needed a bit of beating against the wall to get the dust out.
• I get to the tailor shop at 10:35am and my friend hasn’t yet arrived. I’ve been here before, about four or five times between dropping off fabric and picking up completed clothes, so I get a familiar invitation when I show up: “Brother, sit down, have tea, how are you, are you well, where have you been, how are you really, sit down, what’s up?” These are all young guys, my age or younger. But then an old man (I mean, really old) shakily walks in and we all get up and offer about five seats to him, whichever one he wants. Then we all shoot the breeze until the Kiwi shows up. My friend explains to the head tailor (who is continuously holding back chuckling at both of us in a sort of benevolent amusement) that his wool socks are too long and asks if he can fix them: “Scissors you make? Then [while making the international sign for sewing, if there is one?] close it.” The tailor says, “Sais, bekash.” Okay, take them off. At this point I jump in with a little humor: “Kulesh bekash”—Take all of it off—and the whole room busts a gut, including the old man. Anyway, we pay for our clothes and leave after a few more jokes.
• We walk to the photo store, where I dropped off my film almost a week ago and received assurance that they would be ready for pick-up the next day. So today, six days later, I show up and they’re not even close. I’m going back tomorrow afternoon. How does a photo development shop not develop photos they received a week ago? I can cozy up to a lot of the cultural differences I experience here, but one thing I haven’t been able to get behind is the frequent lack of professionalism and reliability in more “elite” spheres like photo stores, phone stores, etc.
• On the way back to my place, we drop by the qâbeli joint around 11:45am and pick up three servings, three Pepsis and a bit of nan for about US $8, then grab some bananas and hotter nan closer to home. Hi, how are you, etc. with the shopkeeper, whom I see basically every day.
• Get home at noon, right on time. Another lunch guest, an American, is waiting. We go upstairs and, after the Kiwi and I use the restroom (one thing about Afghan culture is that it’s not very bathroom-friendly, so don’t expect to be taking pee breaks in the bâzâr) we chow down. Then I decide to try on my new clothes and realize they cut the pants about four cm too long. Since you don’t roll pant cuffs up here I’ll have to take them back for altering. “Oh well, I guess I can bring my incorrectly made pants back to the tailor while on the way back to the photo store that has taken a week to develop one roll of film they promised would be done a week ago.” Pretty typical line of thought here: Well, that didn’t work out, but at least this other thing didn’t work out either, so now I can take care of one on the way to the other. Somehow that feels more efficient, but I think I’m just duping myself.
• Dari class at 1pm. No point in even trying to translate any of this. You’d just have to be there.
• At 3pm I’m out of class and decide to try to tackle the bukhâri issue so I don’t freeze my rân off again tonight. I remove the nearby toshaq, bolesht and ketâb-â and spread a sheet underneath the cobbled-together exhaust pipe leading to the exhaust tunnel in the wall. I remove the pipe from the wall and dissemble it into the six pieces of which it is comprised (these pieces are not welded or joined together; they overlap and you just sort of smack them together to approximate a seal), and while doing so a thick shower of solidified diesel smoke, like so many fluffy tufts of pitch-black snow, slowly precipitates onto the sheet I’ve wisely laid out. (I have removed my jacket and rolled my sleeves up for this, but I’m still rocking the sweater vest.) I take the pipes down to the “dumpster-ish section” of the property, where all the trash is taken to be burned (and I do mean “all,” because you burn everything here regardless of environmentally advisability). I find a stick and beat the pipes like drums, and a huge amount of gunk flies out. Then I ream the insides with the stick and administer another beating. (That is not to be quoted out of context.) Then I bring the pipes back up, and the heater itself down, and do the same to it. Then I reinstall it all, light it up … and … again, lots of smoke coming out of the joints of the exhaust pipes. And remember, it’s not your friendly wood smoke, it’s more like having a ’70s-era farm truck reverse into your confined bedroom and jettison its foul, un-inspected-engine diesel storm clouds directly into your face. At this point I decide to get chaokidâr help, and he uses a very simple logic to deduce the probable issue: “If you cleaned below, the problem is above.” Ah! Yes. Right. So we grab the vacuum with the hose nozzle thing and head up to my room. The plan is, I’ll remove and hold the exhaust pipe from the wall exhaust tunnel entrance and he’ll stick the hose up there and vacuum out all the junk. So I’m reaching for the power switch on the vacuum when city electricity goes out (it seems to have a knack for well-timed exits). We laugh and he goes to turn the generator on. When he returns we resume our project. I remove the pipe and hold it above my head and he peers into the tunnel and chuckles. “Mushkel unja s?” I ask. “Â, kheli chiz dâra,” he says, then proceeds to vacuum. We look at the filter after he’s done and it’s blacker than black, full of those little puffy diesel snowballs. Which immediately makes me think: What a pain this would be without the convenience of a vacuum; or, what a pain this is for so many people here right now in this town. I light it up and it burns clean. Chaokidârs are cool. And something for the mental Afghanistan survival manual: It’s good to clean your bukhâri and its exhaust pipes, but you gotta check your exhaust tunnels in the wall too.
• I also refill the diesel tank I keep outside my house, change a lightbulb on a ladder (which are made of basically large sticks here) and do a few other house maintenance chores. The chaokidar jokingly tells me: “Sail ku, post-e-kâr-em nagiri!” Look here, don’t take my job!
• 5:30pm I put the toshaq, bolesht and ketâb-â back in place. Dinner is not fancy, almost embarrassingly so. Leftover nan from lunch with Nutella, then instant oatmeal. I’m not too proud to admit I enjoyed it, especially with the semi-heat my bukhâri is kicking out again.
• Sometime around here I go to my bedroom, where my thermometer is hanging from a nail in the wall. I have it in my bedroom, which has no heater, out of some masochistic desire to see the kind of indoor temperatures I suffer every night. Even with the heater blazing about six feet away, the readout is 42°F. I remove the thermometer from the wall and bring it to the living room, where I hold it right up next to the metal walls of the heater and wait. After a few minutes it reads 72°F. Well, at least something in my house is room temperature, even if it is the heater itself.
• From 6-11:30pm, I read a variety of books, make corrections or add new things in my Dari notebook, check and write emails, listen to music, drink tea and send a few texts to friends in town. When power leaves at 8pm I light a candle and put on my LED headlamp. Fill up hot water bottles and chuck them back under the blankets. Move the thermos with freshly boiled water over to my bedside.
• By 11:50 I’m struggling to stay awake, so I call it a day. But as I walk to my bed, power comes back on (again with this uncanny sense of drama). Do I check my email for things that may have come from America over the past four hours, or do I just crash? I choose Internet over sleep and stay up for another 15 or 20 minutes (enough time to load about eight text-only emails with the Internet speed here).
• At 12:20 I set my alarm for 8am (tomorrow, Thursday, is the equivalent of Saturday in the West), crawl into bed, clutch the hot water bottles and dream. My dreams are becoming more vivid these days, especially since I’ve started sleeping with the hot water bottles. Perhaps the warmth allows my body to loan some energy to my mind instead of using it all up on not freezing.

Of course, I didn’t include many of the conversations I had during the day. But I will include one I had during class: My teacher told me she saw me last week on the street, carrying a big plate of pilao to my house (which was for the same lunch I had yesterday, a weekly thing at my place with two friends before Dari class). She, of course, was covered in a burqa and therefore unrecognizable to me. I had set down the plate on top of a big bag of potatoes so I could buy some apples for dessert, and she told me that she had contemplated pranking me by taking the plate and moving it to my other side as I examined the apples. She didn’t, though, because the shopkeeper would have chastised her.

Anyway, that would have been pretty funny. Burqas aren’t all bad, I suppose: they can be good cover for practical jokes.

Well, now it’s “tomorrow” and I need to head to the bâzâr to get my film and drop off my clothes for alteration. Peace!

This entry was written by admin, posted on January 12, 2012 at 2:52 am, filed under City, Culture, Documentary, Friendship, Hometown, Khaana, Language, Money, Teaching, TeamWork, Women and tagged amânat, bazaar, bukhari, class, cold, crime, dari, dreams, film, food, headscarf, journey, lelomi, MM Team, mugging, naan, NGO, peran tumbân, Photography, pilao, public health, shame, sleep, taxi, Teaching, vocation, winter, Women.

A few very, very hither-and-thither thoughts that might shed some light into what life is like here:

• At the Bush Bâzâr (named after good ol’ Dubya), which is comprised of a couple dozen small shops selling goods cast off from NATO and ISAF, you can buy 12-count boxes of Clif Bars for Af 170, or less than $4 US. In the States, Clif Bars cost more than double that.
• There are beggar women who use their children as sympathy bait. Every time I go to the bâzâr I see a two- or three-year-old boy clawing at the ground like an animal, screaming, desperately trying to get away from his mother, who is sitting in a burqa with one hand wrapped in a white-knuckled grip around the kid’s ankle to prevent him from getting away. Meanwhile, she’s fake-moaning and mock-crying over his screaming. There’s another that I often see—a burqa-clad mother with her eight-year-old daughter laid out in front of her on the ground, wrapped tightly in white burial fabric. The girl’s face is blue with cold, and she’s crying softly—a cry that’s a dead giveaway for a completely demolished capacity for hope. And it’s all so the mother can gain a few extra rupees a day, even though these women do have families and homes. These women make sacrifices of their kids in front of the entire city, and nobody does anything. (And remember—this is all the way through the winter, in sub-freezing temperatures, on icy, muddy cobblestone.) I tell them to go home, but there is little I can really do besides that—in large part because in this shame-and-honor-oriented culture it’s a huge offense for a foreigner to draw attention to glaring inhumanities, and I would be in serious danger. And there’s nothing I could do anyway, with all the red tape surrounding cross-gender, cross-religion, cross-nationality, etc. interference. I literally can only pray and keep telling them to go home.
• At the school where I study Dari, there is a blind male teacher about 50 years old. He is blind in both eyes, his pupils completely covered by milky cataracts. But he didn’t lose his vision from those—he initially lost it when he was hit by shrapnel while fighting the Russians, and you can see the scars to prove it all around his eyes.
• I was in a tailor shop yesterday, getting my third outfit of clothes made and talking to the tailor about how his mother lives in England as a political refugee. He can’t receive a visa to visit her because he’s over the age of 25, and England doesn’t want Afghan families to be started there. Sounds pretty crazy to me.
• If the sunset has aber-sukhta (burning clouds) in the west, the next day will be clear. But if the clouds don’t burn in the west, or if they burn in the east, then the next day will be snowy or rainy.
• Typical greetings (”Are you well? Did you arrive safely? Healthy body? How’s your family? How are you? Good, good. How’s your health? Don’t be tired. Be healthy. You’re good. Safe. Very good …”) can take somewhere between three to ten times longer than American greetings, and sometimes … they … just … keep … on … going … until someone finally gives in and says, “Yes, I’m fine, thank you.”
• At traffic roundabouts or châr-râ-i (four-way), which are often the biggest landmarks referred to in directions (intersections as opposed to streets), if you want to go straight through from one side to the other, first you maneuver from the outside of the circle to the inside … and then you maneuver from the inside back to the outside so that you can leave the circle and keep going. Everyone does this. Why? I have no idea.
• Hospitality is highly valued. So is peace and quiet and calmness. Makes sense in a culture plagued by war, instability, violence and unrest. The Afghans have us Americans completely whupped when it comes to hospitality, no question about it.
• When you order food to go from a restaurant, they often give you their own plate to take to your house. (They load up the plate, then horizontally slide the plate into a plastic shopping bag, tie it up and give it you.) Then you take it home, eat it, wash it and bring it back within a day or two.
• Which brings me to another value: the value of amânat, or entrusted things. If you borrow something, be sure you can return it, especially if the person calls it amânat. I have even heard one (true) story like this: An NGO’s radio was stolen by an untrustworthy employee, who wouldn’t own up to the crime. So the NGO boss went to the employee’s father, asked him to have his son return the amânat (he didn’t even refer to the exact item) … and a few days later, there it was, back at the office.
• Which brings me to yet another value: family. They have it, we kind of don’t. For example, marriages not only should have family permission, they have to have it. And that permission doesn’t just involve the parents—it’s everybody, with the most important vote being the grandfathers of the woman, if they are living.
• One time my teacher and I were talking about poker, cards, dice, dog-fighting, camel-fighting, bird-fighting, etc. … pretty much all types of gambling. I tried to get at the Dari word for “random” or “chance,” which seemed to be the most useful component of the whole conversation (the notion of randomness is pretty useful in conversation sometimes) but I couldn’t get her to understand what I was going for. Then finally, after trying for about five minutes, I hooked onto an example that got the meaning through, and she said, “Oh—châns!” I just looked at her for a second and then blew up in laughter. The words are basically the same.
• Men hold hands in public, kiss each other on the cheek, and lean on each other’s knees while reclining. They also love flowers, embroidered curtains, and hot tea. At weddings, men dance only with other men. And they will kill you with their many guns if you breach a boundary with one of their women.
• One way to identify a newly arrived foreigner: If the power goes out while he’s talking and he pauses mid-sentence.
• People have been pulled over by the police for wearing seat belts here. The assumption was that they must have been drunk to be so concerned with accident contingencies.
• I can’t count the times I’ve been struck by the financial honesty of so many people here, especially store owners, and especially young store operators (i.e. under the age of 10). I argued with one kid over two rupees one time (in his favor—I was buying something worth 38 and gave him 40 and insisted I would not take the change) but he would not accept that. After a minute of back and forth, and an unsuccessful attempt on my part to leave the counter, he forced two mints into my hand: “One rupee each.” Another time, I bought a big plastic shopping bag from a bag-selling eight-year-old kid in the bâzâr. They’re worth five rupees and I gave him 10. I walked off and he called me back: “Five rupees!” I said, “No, no, it’s okay.” He insisted. I put my hand on his shoulder and said, “No thanks. It’s for you.” Then his eyes got a little happy and he slowly put it into his pocket.
• One of the joys of being in the bâzâr during winter is buying roasted corn kernels and having the guy just dump them, fresh and hot, right into your jacket pocket. Ten Afs for a pocketful. Then you walk around, doing your shopping with a warm pocket and stuff to munch on.

I suppose that’s it for tonight. It’s so absurdly hard to communicate life here. But just flowing random thoughts out is probably the best way I can try.

This entry was written by admin, posted on January 6, 2012 at 3:04 pm, filed under City, Culture, Family, Friendship, Hometown, Language, Money, Women and tagged amânat, bazaar, beggar, food, greetings, honesty, hospitality, nobility, poverty, struggle, Women.