a city parched

Afternoon winds have brought a sandstorm.  I noticed an increase in clouds while having a bowl of dal with bread and shliepshano, the yougurt kind of drink with Rezak, Wali and Younnis who had an IV in his left hand, a bag of saline solution hanging on the wall.  He pointed to his stomach and if I had laughed out loud it would have been misunderstood, I’m sorry for this illness but eating a large bowl of something white creamed with unidentifiable lumps while you’re hooked up to a saline solution is…I don’t know.  I asked Wali if he wanted to see my stitches, it’s an ugly thing all right, the belly button itself looks like a rotten orange.  ‘John we like you, we want you to stay three years.”  Guffaws, chokes, where’s my peace pipe, where's the woman and child in the home I would return to every evening?  And where's the beer and weekend football games?  Gee, you sound like some place familiar may be better for you now.  Easy, spirit, breathe deep and listen to nothing.

The dark khaki sky is quite fine of sand and I see it pushing through the window frames and then the screens.  Fine gold dust it is not.  It’s just sand.  Desert sand.  Temperatures this Monday say we’ll be going down close to fifty, wow, put on the warm clothes for the first time in years.

7.11pm—The toefl students didn’t show up tonight.  Most of them work for Chemico, an NGO that does something with agriculture, and they are getting more work thrown at them, according to those who came last week.  Ok, I don’t have a problem, but this class will be counted and we’ll go on.

Fezal is cooking up potatoes, I know I’m Irish but man does not live on potatoes alone.  No sweat, man, yesterday I bought pistachios, man are they good unless you got a throbbing tooth. 

The generator is off, all in black, wait a minute for the solar…I went to the roof at six when no students had come and what a nice moon with clouds scene.  Thankfully I brought the Leica and I should learn how to take these images better.  Having a tripod would greatly benefit. 

Boiled potatoes with pepper, bread, and green chutney was enough, I didn’t need it but Fezal is a good cook and the carbs without oil were ok. 

So for tomorrow’s seven am class the first eight will get a bag of rice and then we will talk about that bag of rice.  What will we talk about?  How to cook it.  New vocabulary?  Instructions on the bag?  I’d wager none of them need instructions on how to cook rice. 

“Do you know how to cook rice?”  Yes, please proceed to the next question.  No, how old are you?  I think every man should be able to cook a minimum of two or three things.  Rice is not difficult to make.  Eggs, fried, boiled, are not difficult to cook.  Ok, I guess some kind of pasta is not difficult to cook.  Fezel and I looked at cake recipes made in microwaves.  Saffi returned from a market with a bag of cheese slices, honey, a loaf of bread, and jam for breakfast tomorrow and stuffed it in the fridge.  It is cool we are getting more power.  Is that because others are using less of it?  Well, wouldn’t we be using it as much as when there wasn’t enough?  What?? Time to go to bed and turn off that space ambient nonsense.  I’m grounded, dude.

10.17.15

Clouds eclipse the sun’s arrival and it’s ok.  Morning roof excursions at six in the morning could become a routine if I go to bed early enough and another layer of nature is present when I look outside my window.

This morning’s class received the Minnesota rice with curiosity and after discussion of all things rice one man said he wouldn’t eat it.  It’s too different, we don’t like to change our diet.  And if, I suggested, a Chinese restaurant came to Kandahar you would never visit it because everything is different?  You wouldn’t try at least one item on the menu?  It’s ok to try something once, and we agreed. 

The diet of the poor never changes.  You eat what is available and if bread is always available and it is cheap, then you eat it all day.  The Afghans are not rice eaters.  Once or twice a week they say.  It’s bread and meat.  They laugh when I tell them I eat dal three times a week, sometimes four times.  Dal comes from Pakistan (or India), it is an import.  Right, and the poor there eat it and it’s more nutritious and it is…I don’t think it is cheaper than bread I guess.

Overcast mornings are so novel to me I stand outside and just suck it through a straw.  The summer sun in Kandahar is a punishing beast, there is no respite from it for ten weeks, perhaps longer since I arrived at the first of August.  Perhaps June is just as bad, and May, and…I think August is usually the hottest month and I will not do another August here.

Hanukkah and Rezak clean the pool and I can hear the echoes of conversation from the floor below.  I can’t help but feel excited that tomorrow it could get really cold.  It’s like the first snow, ya know?  But there’s no snow here just the cold and today nice, autumnal grays drift by.  No rain but I don’t know, maybe it will rain tonight as the cold front edges closer to a city parched.