naywaneh

6:00am

With the worst headache in memory I climbed under the blankets at seven thirty yesterday evening.  I am ok today.  Oddly but I am guessing my headaches have something to do with some crazy barometric pressure going on.   When a system rolls through I hurt and then I feel better when it passes.  I don’t know. 

So I pack again.  Dark skies and rain fall early.  The Herati will be last and if there is room it goes, I think it’s going to be ok, maybe not, thank God my headache dissipated though I know one of the culprits is smoking and tomorrow I will put away the pipe.  I guess there is some kind of timing going on here, the headache, leaving, I think the headache has also been exacerbated with stress, I mean, a one sentence email saying there are 'no plans to return him to Kandahar’. 

Part of the headache may have also come from an afternoon visiting the 40 steps and Baba Wali’s shrine with the boss and S.W.  Finally you say, ya and to be honest it was anti climatic.  I thought there’d be lions carved by Babur himself to see and take a photo of, only a few steps shy of a forty, some inscriptions in Dari and that was it.  A nice view was had at the top of this jagged mountain tip and here for the first time I saw Kandahar and it is green, very green except for where people live. 

There are ten thousand American troops in Afghanistan and there is one native American English teacher in Kandahar who leaves tomorrow.  This morning is calm and that is good.  And I have a class in twenty minutes, that is if the four students travel through a dark khaki morning.

9:13am

You should fret that Trump will take a step closer to becoming what no one wants, but he will never be chosen by the people.  The media fans the flames, ignorant people with boring lives are getting into the fray of the world’s most absurd reality show. 

1:39pm

Big thunder is rolling over us, the skies are dark and so is this room.  A nice send-off?  My headache returns.  All is packed the house is silent.  This room horrified me when I first walked in, six weeks of dust had collected after the last tenant, curtains hung darkly and that broken queen size crack mattress on the floor and it was hot. 

Rezek is in the kitchen, only today he learned I was leaving when he saw my suitcase on the floor open.  Hanukkah didn’t know either until this morning at breakfast and nothing was translated as he talked.  I should take a nap after lunch.  Listen to that rain…my headache disappears…

4:21pm

‘This is a thunderstorm,’ and lightening follows, big cracking booms and I am so glad this is happening today and not tomorrow though it could happen again, I don’t think so.  Enjoy it, ignore the persisting headache.

8:42pm

My new visa was emailed to me  and the office door is locked.  For the first time.  The boss is coming in the morning so I can copy it out.  Travelling without a passport makes me a little nervous but I think things will be fine.  I know what the home office is thinking, he’s American, he doesn’t need a passport to fly to Kabul.  Perhaps but you never know, before we enter the airport area the patting down and id checking soldiers are the ones that make me fret. We’ll see.  I am not worried, I am ok, I took one tramadol and I hope to sleep in the next five minutes to an hour. 

In some places a man's best friend is his toaster.