coming after you

‘Sir, I love this movie’ and then Ezza sings two words: Matchmaker Matchmaker in a slightly embarrassed falsetto and ha, we’re in the clear.  So I gave him The Sound of Music and Never Cry Wolf.  I asked him to look for ‘Inherent Vice’ on the streets. 

Students don’t have internet access in the house, a good thing, but sometimes I wish they could so to answer questions like how far is it from here to Siberia? 

The boss is flying to Kabul this morning for the holiday week which means I’ll have to go to the market today and buy food.  When he’s not here breakfast and lunch are not served so I need pasta, coffee, biscuits, a sweet bread, tomatoes, cucumbers, garlic, onion.

The internet is problematic again today.  It went off last night right in the middle of creating the family fb page and I went outside to see if anyone was up to ask about this irritation and spent an hour on the blanket under a huge galaxy on a very chilly night and chatted with Saffiq and Hannukah who gave an account of his encounter with a Soviet tank and how his shoulder missile jammed at the wrong moment and six of his comrades were killed. He survived, obviously, and later blew up the tent.  “The Russian soldiers were never afraid.  They kept coming after you.”

John Ranagan was the father of Marcella Ranagan.  The dominant gene wouldn’t have passed on as  evidently if the smallest girl of eight had had another father. 

I have one class today, eight and a half hours from now.  What shall I do with myself until then?  Stay away from the chillum, it could do you good but it could also do you no good.  Well, that remains to be seen. 

4.27pm

Four of us ate mixed grill from the Ayno Meena Afghai-Dubai restaurant and three hours later I still hurt from eating too much.  A meal for four and a heaping plate of leftovers cost around $32.  A much needed nap followed and in thirty minutes there’s my toefl class.  Maybe no one will show up.  Maybe they are as eager as I am to have a holiday. 

10:21pm

We watched videos from Sri Lanka, Oman and Nepal, and then La Chaim, Sunrise-Sunset, a wedding dance and the bad Russians.  Then Fezel said goodbye and I returned to the internet and the computer crashed and other little malfunctions have been happening and makes me wonder what else besides cookies did my colleague remove?  Maybe some firewall protection, I don’t know but thankfully it revived itself.

I should be glad I have a little bit of work to do for the next three days.  It’s all about pace, right? 

9.9.15

Local grapes.  I washed them off, patted them down, so far we are good.  A six am 50 minute walk through the neighborhood with Fezel and along came the camera.  Such nice gardens surround these huge houses.  Last night I saw the season’s first pomegranates.  Two more weeks until they’re really ready I’m told.  These looked sort of ready.   

Kandahar’s first supermarket is slowly filling up with new products but ‘they’re not a supermarket until there are fruit and vegetables here’.  There are a half dozen shops one has to go to now to get bread, eggs, tomatoes, cereal, milk and minced chicken.  One clean, shiny new place to get everything would be welcome here.

Yesterday the Taliban knocked down a few power lines.  I swear they are like children, they have to be swatted.  No power again today.  To get the internet I must go into a warm cellar where there is a sort of ok reception there.  Thankfully now temps have cooled at night considerably and by ten in the morning, it’s still ok. 

Take a shower.  It’s a holiday. 

6.26pm. 

Hanukkah knocked on the door and he was here with lunch.  He laid out the plastic and placed two manhole size chapattis and two bowls of stewed potatoes and a serving bowl of the yogurt stuff on it and we ate right here.  Never mind I ate a bowl of pasta with vegetables an hour earlier.  That was awfully nice of him.  He then returned with the grapes and I think we sort of discussed the varieties of grape here in the valley. 

The sunset was quick, another day of absolutely no clouds.  There was an afternoon of power and I think Hanukkah will turn on the solar in a few hours.  If he doesn’t I’ll remind him.  I don’t wish to be in the dark all night.