Zen and the Art of Peacekeeping

Town and Country Girl

SA Trip 06, originally uploaded by frida world.

I'm a town and country mouse, absolutely, but also an Afghan mountain mouse, a Negev desert mouse, and whenever possible an underwater scuba mouse. Hmmm, I guess I might just be a gypsy mouse. But I'm not really a Big City mouse, although short visits to my city mouse friends are fabulous fun, and I have great memories of mouscepades in London, NYC, Paris, Berlin, Rome, Buenos Aires, Chicago, Mexico City and Sao Paulo. This week I got tagged twice to list eight random things about myself (once by Home in Kabul and once by the lovely {a] of Spelling Tuesday) so here are two lists for Sunday Scribblings, a town list and a country list.

Eight things I love about the country:

1. Driving out of the city on Friday night for weekends on the home farm with my parents, big sister, brother-in-law and the kids - watching my nephew ride his moto-cross bike through the front paddock.

2. Waking up in Mum and Dad's house to the sound of birds and the smell of grass (and of coffee brewing in the kitchen).

3. Long slow runs along country roads, with plenty of time for gentle thoughts and smiles at the cows.

4. The entire New Zealand coastline - farmland and bush sweeping down to the sea with empty beaches to walk along in silence and solitude.

5. Neighbours and family friends who have known me my whole life and who still like me (or like my parents enough to pretend they do) despite my weird lifestyle and long years of absence.

6. Spring: if you're not working on the farm then the season of lambs and calves is pure joy (if you are working, then it is pure exhaustion). I love the slightly creepy feeling of a sandpapery calf tongue sucking on my fingers as I guide it to the milk teat on the feed drum.

7. A childhood filled with sleepouts, dinners cooked on a campfire, improvised tree huts and club houses, tree-climbing, bonfires, and learning to ride a motorbike and drive a tractor long before it was legal.

8. School calf and lamb club days - even though my big sister always got the champion shield, I was often a pretty close second with my calves named after native birds (Tui) and great-aunts (Daphne and Heather)

Eight things I love about town:

1. Old style cinemas especially on rainy Sunday afternoons - with comfy seats, great movies and glasses of wine.

2. Long slow runs through sleepy Sunday morning suburbs, watching the city wake up, followed by huge vegan brunch at a cafe named after Fidel Castro.

3. Book clubs, scrabble and sherry in my favorite bar with my favorite ladies (and very cute barmen stopping by to check out the books and make conversation with the ladies).

4. Access to yoga classes, organic food stores and new music.

5. Bookstores, bookstores, bookstores (the best one I've ever seen is Powell's in Portland, I swear it is worth visiting the city just for this bookstore).

6. Cafes with soymilk and wireless internet.

7. Exploring new cities, e.g. sitting in a pavement cafe listening to guitar music on the street in Buenos Aires (see photo above).

8. Summer concerts in the park or on the beach - with GG's cakestand, cupcakes and Falling Water cocktails.

Sunday Scribblings: Deepest, darkest

When I was living in Kabul I once saw a map with an unusual landmark – there, near Flower Street, was marked “the Jew’s house”. I asked around about it a little bit and was told that there was literally only one Afghan Jew living in Afghanistan, and the house marked on the map was, indeed, his house.

It was also the site of the crumbling synagogue, and it occurred to me that the original name for the building may have been “the Jews’ house” – but by 2006 it was indeed the house of the only and only known Afghan Jew remaining in Afghanistan.

As time went on I heard a number of different stories about the only remaining Afghan Jew in Afghanistan. One story was that there had been two Jews in Kabul until early 2005 (when the elder of them died of natural causes), and that they had lived in the same compound but that they hated each other vehemently – each worshiping alone in his own corner of the synagogue.

The Sunday Scribbling’s prompt this week – “deepest, darkest” made me think about these stories. I couldn’t stop thinking about them and wanted to find out if it was true. Was it true that these men had lived alone, isolated from their families, friends and religious communities through the darkest days of the Taleban rule in Kabul? Could it be true that their deepest and darkest fears and desires had grown into distrust and suspicion of each other? Was it true that this distrust had then grown into a hatred that kept them isolated from even each other? Did this hatred really prevent them from sharing in the only spiritual communion available within perhaps a thousand kilometers?

The wonders of the internet came to my rescue and it seems that all I had heard was in fact true. In January 2007 the Washington Post reported the death of Ishaq Levin, and the response of his neighbour and arch-enemy – Zablon Simintov:

KABUL, Afghanistan, Jan. 26 -- When Zablon Simintov found Ishaq Levin sprawled on the cement synagogue floor last week, he immediately realized two things: His housemate and archnemesis of nearly seven years was dead, and he was now in all likelihood the last Afghan Jew still living in the country.

"I'm not sad about that," Simintov said with a frown Wednesday. He acknowledged dryly that he would not miss Levin, an octogenarian who apparently died of natural causes. Simintov, 44, had feuded bitterly with him for as long as the two men occupied separate rooms in the ruins of the only remaining synagogue in Kabul.

When he talks about the men’s experiences during Taleban rule in Afghanistan, I begin to imagine how these two men had gone from being friends to enemies:

On many occasions, he said, Taliban officials carted him and Levin off to jail, where they were beaten with electric cables and rifle butts for days.

"The Taliban would shout at me, 'Why don't you convert to Islam?' And I would say, 'Not if you paid me one million dollars,'" Simintov recalled.

… in 1998, after Levin and Simintov were released from their first detention, they found the Taliban had ransacked the synagogue for almost all items of value it still contained, including a silver pointer and four tiny silver bells. A few months later, a Taliban commander confiscated its last, most precious treasure: a handwritten Torah scroll that Simintov estimates was about 400 years old.

Simintov blames Levin for that loss. The two men had been friendly acquaintances long before Simintov returned from Turkmenistan. Simintov, whose apartment was destroyed during the civil war, moved into the synagogue, and Levin, already living there as a caretaker, initially welcomed him. But Simintov said they fell out within a month …

Finally, he claimed that Levin tried to get rid of him by telling the Taliban he was a spy. According to Simintov, when Levin found out that he wanted to send the Torah to Israel for safekeeping, he objected and told the Taliban that Simintov was trying to sell it.

"The Taliban arrested us both. Each time we were arrested . . . it was because of Ishaq," Simintov said. The Torah "was probably worth about $10,000, but Ishaq told the Taliban it was worth $2 million," he said. "So of course the Taliban came for it."

In an earlier article   (2001) I read that Levin also accused Simintov of having denounced him to the Taleban as a spy:

K A B U L, Afghanistan, Dec. 2 - Yitzhak Levy and Zebolan Simintov say they are the last two Jews in Afghanistan and they hate each other with a vengeance.

"Yitzhak and the Taliban, they're the same," said Simintov, 41, pressing the tips of two fingers together to make the point. Across the courtyard of a crumbling apartment building on Flower Street that used to be home to a community of some 30 Jewish families, Levy is just as bitter about his neighbor. The building has no glass in its windows, no running water and two synagogues, one that Simintov climbs into through a window frame and another that Levy keeps under lock and key.

"All my problems are because of Zebolan," said Levy, a squat man with a flowing white beard and battered sheepskin Astrakhan hat, who gave his age as 60. He recites a litany of woes capped by accusations that the only other Jew in Kabul had denounced him to the  Taliban as a spy for Israel and landed him in jail five times." They threw me on the floor and one sat on my neck and two on my  feet. The other two beat me with electrical cables. Now I can't walk properly," he said of one spell in jail.

The BBC also confirms the basics of the story, and although my curiosity has been satisfied I’m left with a heavy sense of sadness. Mr Simintov remains in Afghanistan – lonely, sad, angry and consumed by his quest to recover the confiscated scroll. He told reporters “I have nothing, I live like a dog”.

So all in all, this story turned out to both deep and dark. But it was not all bad news. I had heard one more story about the last Afghan Jew in Afghanistan. I heard that a congregation of Afghan Jews in New York sends him a care package for Passover every year. It turns out that this is also true

Jack Abraham, the president of Congregation Anshei Shalom, the only Afghan synagogue in the United State, says he started sending the Passover packages to Kabul in 2003 after hearing that Simanto had no matzo for Passover.

… Simanto uses the matzos, grape juice and oil sent by New York’s Afghan Jewish community to conduct the Seder, a meal eaten on the first evening of the Passover holiday to commemorate the enslavement of the Jews in ancient Egypt and their later escape into freedom.

This means that he should be opening his package right about now (Passover begins tomorrow). It may not fundamentally alter the outcome of this sad tale, but it does make me feel a little sense of hope to know that the only Afghan Jew left in Kabul will have the basic ingredients to conduct the Seder tomorrow.

Now, someone should write that story!

Sunday Scribblings: In the kitchen

In the kitchen of my childhood my mother taught my sisters and I to bake cupcakes, current scones, chocolate cake, caramel slice and meringues. Baking with Mum was a fun activity that involved not too many rules and lots of space to learn. I loved dipping a cup into the big flour and sugar bins in the pantry, carefully measuring the softened butter into the mixing bowl and standing right inside the pantry while I watched Mum’s big old cake mixer cream the butter and sugar. Mum had taught us how to recognise by sight and texture when the mixture was adequately creamed, but inevitably I preferred to test it by taste. 

In the kitchens of the farmhouses in which I grew up the preparation and presentation of food was almost exclusively the domain of women. It still is. Most days my father would arrive back from the cowshed just in time to clean himself up and take his place at the head of the dinner table.

In the kitchen of my first shared house, however, during my first year at university, I had to learn to share space and food with two men who were as different from me as they were from each other. Tully, our resident surfer, would be up and out to the beach early in the morning taking the whole loaf of bread with him and leaving none for Stuart and I to toast for breakfast. Stuart was older, more considerate and house-trained, but whilst he fancied spaghetti bolognaise for dinner I was both a vegetarian and constantly on a diet. 

In that kitchen I carefully baked the perfect chocolate cake and cycled out to a farm a little outside of town to give it to a cute boy I had spotted at church, the boy I ended up marrying.

After Dave and I got married we were on an incredibly tight budget. We lived in a two story concrete block flat in which condensation would collect on the ceiling and run in yellow rivulets down the walls, washing away some of the many years worth of grime, grease and smoke. In our wee kitchen we devised ingenious ways of making a miniscule grocery budget stretch to cater for a dinner party for friends and neighbours. 

Years later, single and studying again, I lived in a tiny granny flat or sleep-out in the garden of a villa where my little sister and four of her best friends were living. It had a very basic little kitchenette with a bench-top grill and an element. I was studying at the time and often worked through the night at the little oak table in the kitchen, making endless cups of tea and gazing out the kitchen window into the moonlit garden and across to the sleeping house. Sitting in that little kitchen I felt as though I had the world to myself.

In our kitchen in Gaza my housemate Sharifa and I cooked together many afternoons, sharing all the dramas of our daily lives over a bubbling pot of lentil soup. When we got up in the morning at 6.30 am she refused to speak a word of English, insisting that her brain simply couldn’t work at that hour, so over mint tea and my breakfast cigarette she taught me a thousand new French words, with a sufficient sprinkling of French-Arabic slang thrown in to give me some street credibility next time I was in Paris. 

One of my favourite places in the world is a kitchen in Tel Aviv. I’ve spent countless hours in the kitchen of Israel and Aviva, who were like second parents to me, welcoming me into their home whenever I got away from Gaza for the weekend. Aviva’s only requirement was that I stay for shabat dinner on Saturday, and that I try a little of everything she prepared. She never let me help with the cooking, my only job was to sit at the kitchen table while she cooked, talking about everything from the challenges of her work as a management consultant to the pressing (in her view) question of when I planned to have babies.

Apart from shabat, the kitchen was Israel’s domain and when I came down the stairs from my room after a lovely, lazy lie-in it was always Israel who insisted on making me espresso coffee and who laid out the breakfast table; a buffet of white and yellow cheeses, sliced vegetables, olives, and pastries. Apart from my own, I can think of few other homes where I felt as totally loved, accepted and welcomed as I did there, and the kitchen was the heart of it all. 

Here in Afghanistan for the first time in my life I live in a house with a cook, Payman. He doesn’t really like it when I cook for myself, but he is coming to accept that I will insist on doing so at least some of the time. However, I can’t deny that I have adapted well to the privileges of having him around. My current morning ritual is to wake early and do my morning meditation, then wander downstairs to collect a big soy latte that Payman makes for me. I come back upstairs and write in my journal, shower, dress and head back downstairs for the glass of freshly squeezed orange juice that is waiting for me in the kitchen. I like to think that I am Payman’s favorite, partly because I am the only woman living in the house at the moment and partly because I speak a little bit more Dari than the others.

Ultimately, there are few places that give me a sense of home more strongly than my mother’s kitchen when it is filled with the women of my family: my mother, aunts, cousins and sisters. They bustle, chat, laugh, cook, slice, dice, mix and stir. One of them stops to scoop up a small child who is getting underfoot, passing the child out to the men in the lounge with an instruction to keep a closer eye on her. They drink wine, make fun of each other, then get back to more cooking, more laughing, more industry, more love.

Sunday scribblings: Inspiration

I've been having a ball today, reading about your juicy, poetic, inticing, fantastic, literary,  and inspirational muses.

I love, love, LOVE your inspirations. But they are in many ways so very different from my muse, who I think of a somewhat more prosaic. She shows herself to me in the most ordinary places, as I read the newspaper, when I am in the middle of a meeting with an NGO or as I walk down the street.

She is in the face of the young woman who is striding purposefully towards the high school in Herat, and in the words of a wonderful friend as she shares her love for the residents of the house for homeless youth where she works.

She shines a soft light on the smallest of miracles and banishes the shadow of pointlessness. She may not be a poet, nor a painter. She is, however, as gutsy as any de-miner and as persistent as a street kid asking for change. She is brave, and she never lets me forget the possibility of change, however small that possibility may seem.

When I lose sight of her, or forget to look for her is when the sadness overwhelms me. When I keep my eyes open to her she is always there, shining out of a smile on the face of an Afghan woman or leaping off the pages of a project proposals that believes in the future.

She inspires me to keep finding new ways to bring a little relief to the suffering and a little justice to the oppressed. She is my muse and although I cannot deny that I wonder what I might be like to find inspiration in more marvelous and poetic places I love her for her willingness to get a little bit muddy, to go without hot showers and to keep believing, keep trying and keep laughing in the midst of it all.

Back and puzzled (Sunday Scribblings)

Wow, I've been gone only two weeks and yet it feels like a lifetime. After 36 hours of travel from Auckland to Kabul and then a very slow flight on the ancient Antonov aircraft via Kandahar I finally arrived back to Herat this afternoon. Waiting for me were more than 350 work emails, a meeting set up for an hour after I landed to address a case in which one young man has already died and several other are living in fear, and a staff member in jail after being involved in a car accident in which a young child was injured.

So that's the end of the beach holiday then, I guess.

I was really reluctant to return this time. For the first time ever in my experience of mission work, of travelling to and from duty stations and of saying all those goodbyes, this time I was uncertain that I really wanted to be leaving. I wept as I embraced my darling younger sister and said goodbye, perhaps this time was just one time too many, or perhaps it was just the knowledge that this place has been a place of sadness and struggle for me in the past few months and a reluctance to come back and face that.

I came back with lots of puzzles, and above all with the puzzle of how to do this, how to live in the place and do this work while maintaining my own sense of well-being and inner calm. Looked at from one angle this puzzle seems very complicated, and to require getting lots of little pieces all in the right places, at the right time, in the right balance and for the right amount of time. But from another angle it seems that the puzzle can only be solved by trying less, by letting go more, and by the very simplest of approaches, like breathing and resting and finding joy wherever it is to be found.

Along with this puzzle, I've come back with some new insights, some new ideas and new approaches. Perhaps most importantly of all I have come back with a growing sense of emergence from the dark, sad place that I found myself in for much of the past two months.

I'm still a bit jetlagged and my home and bed are calling to me - but I wanted to share three things that I found on the plane during my journey back.

The first came from a wonderful gift from the gorgeous and thoughtful Alessandra who sent me some of her worry dolls, along with some other lovely treats including a copy of Yoga Journal magazine. I read it from cover to cover on the plane and found all sorts of wonderful reminders and new ideas for how I can continue on my journey to discover how to live this crazy life of movement and conflict and yet remain grounded and at peace within myself.

One article by Sally Kempton about surrender and the practice of letting go particularly challenged me. I read and write and talk about letting go, but when I am honest with myself I know that I don't practice it very often. What I found especially helpful in this article was the discussion of the difference between letting go and giving up. I am going to keep thinking about this difference. A fear of giving up, of abdicating my responsiblity to make a difference in the world, is a significant part of my resistance to letting go. So it was helpful to read a story about a yogi who learned that "a true karma yogi is not someone who goes belly-up to higher authority; instead, he's a surrendered activist - a person who does his best to help create a better reality while knowing that he is not in charge of outcomes."

That is an insight that I need to remind myself of in my morning meditations, which I am promising myself every morning for the next 21 days (thanks to Meg and Thea for the inspiration to use 21 days as a time frame to let this new habit take root in my life).

The second place in which I found some words that my heart and spirit recognised was in a book of poems given to me as a gift by a woman who I am getting to know because she is the partner of my boyfriend's best friend. It is a lovely and unexpected treat to find that she is just the kind of woman with whom I would want to make friends wherever and however I may have met her. She gave me a copy of Mary Oliver's collection of poems "Dream Work" and I found myself drawn immediately to this poem:

The Journey

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice -
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles
"Mend my life!"
each voice cried.
But you didn't stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations -
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice,
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do -
determined to save
the only life you could save.

The third place was in a booklet that had been left on the UNHAS flight from Dubai to Kabul, it is a little book called "The WFP Field Staff Companion" and it discusses the challenges of field life in a difficult mission like Afghanistan. It includes some very sound practical tips about things like exercising and maintaining close contact with friends and family at home, but it was the section on burn-out and coping after trauma that really resonated for me. Here they explained the symptoms of burnout and of traumatic stress and I felt once again that little shock of recognition, they could have been describing exactly my experience in the months following my experiences during the assassination of Amanullah Khan and the ensuing battles and casualties. There was very little here that I haven't read, or been told on many previous occassions, but now I was reading it with a little bit of distance from the experience and it seemed much easier to see what I had been going through. Again they recommend relaxation and avoiding self-judgement.

Which brought me all the way back to the magazine Alessandra sent me, and a article about the importance and health benefits of resotrative yoga. Even further back, it reminded me of the words of a teacher from the Yoga centre in New Zealand where I took some private instruction when I was home for my sister's wedding last year, very soon after the trauma of the fighting.

I had asked my teacher Jude for some intensive teaching on the Ashtanga primary series, in the hope of lifting my pratice of the asanas to the next level. She, in her wisdom, gave me some of this, but also insisted on spending some of the sessions focused on restorative yoga and yoga nidra (mediation). She saw my discipline and my drive to achieve and succeed. She acknowledged this as a positive along with my physical and mental strength. However, with kindness and good humour, she also suggested what I needed was not help to push myself harder into the difficult poses, but help to learn to relax and let go.

So my 21 day gift to myself (I'm not going to call it a challenge, because somehow that seems too much like the kind of effort I always make, and this time I want to be easy and kind and gentle with myself) is to practice meditation every morning and some restorative poses every night. During my meditation I will practice letting go - not giving up on my commitment to do all that I can to make a better reality, but letting go a (false) sense of responsibility for the outcomes.

Labels: Spirit, Sunday Scribblings

Sunday Scribblings: Goodbye

1995 Goodbye David Goodbye my husband, my love. Nobody else knows the young woman I am today like you do, and no one ever will. You have been my friend, my love, my playmate and my confidant through these crazy, fantastic years of our youth. Through death and loss and grief you have loved me. Through confusion and doubt you have always stayed close. We set out on this adventure of life together. We cast our simple but surprisingly sturdy little boat out into these turbulent waters. You have never failed me, nor betrayed my trust in you. We have tried everything that we could think of, we have tried and then tried again. No, we have not failed each other, but we have come to the end of our trying. We are worn out, exhausted and sad, so sad. Goodbye my lovely philosopher. Goodbye my friend.

1996 Goodbye New Zealand
Goodbye my homeland. Goodbye my turangawaewae, my place to stand. As long as I know you are here, I will never be lost. But now I need to leave. I need to be away from here. Suddenly you seem too small to contain the pain that is burning within me and the desire that is bursting out of me. I could drive through one day and a night and come to the edge of your beautiful shoulders. I need to go further. I need to spread out my arms and not touch the edges. I need to get lost in a sea of strangers. I need to stand in the middle of a desert so vast I can sense the majesty of the universe and imagine being lost in it myself. I need to cast myself into the world with no one beside me. I need to discover again what I can do alone. Though I will always return to you, though I belong to you, goodbye Aotearoa.

2001 Goodbye Gaza, Goodbye Israel
Goodbye courageous Gaza, do you know that you’ve captured a part of my heart. I will never truly leave you. I will also never again be the girl I was when I landed here and you embraced me in your warm, passionate arms. Goodbye crazy, wonderful Gaza, but how can I leave you like this? Your streets are in flames and your children are fighting again. Goodbye my beloved Gaza, and all my friends here.

Goodbye Bassam, you were so kind to this stranger, you and Donia and the girls, there are no words for what you gave me. Goodbye Raji, you pushed me and pulled me and stretched me and tested me, you taught me what I was capable of and yet never managed to toughen me up. Goodbye Ibrahim, I sat in your house three times every week as you taught me Arabic and how hard life can be here. Goodbye Tariq, and Jehan and Ala, you opened your hearts and your homes to me and taught me how to live in this place. Goodbye Sharifa, you came to be my housemate and we discovered we were soul mates. Goodbye Ross, you were with me from the first day and you have always been here, letting me sit in your studio while you work. I have always known that I could rely on you for some sanity when I was losing mine. Goodbye Mehdi, you shared a little of your soul with me and reminded me of my own path. Goodbye Amanda, Eva and Imogen, goodbye Tim, Bahaar, Ludvig and Vincent. You have been my sisters and my brothers here for almost two years, through the disagreements and tensions and laughter and tears I have grown to love you.

Goodbye Israel, because I love you too though you drive me almost insane. Though your army in Gaza breaks my heart a hundred times everyday. Though your soldiers and checkpoints have reduced me to tears of anger, desperation, and deep sadness. Goodbye Israel and Aviva, Asaf, and Tamar, you are family to me and your home is my home. Goodbye darling Adomy, my lover and my friend. You have always been ready with a story, a cinnamon roll and a sweet kiss, to nurse me back into wholeness after weeks of the madness of life here. Goodbye Rachel and Assaf, my cousins. Your lives ‘on the other side’ are so very far from mine, but you have still opened you arms to me. Goodbye Jerusalem, goodbye Al Quds. No other city has moved me as you do and I will never recover from this first love of your pinks and greys, your sounds and smells, your soul.

Goodbye beloved Gaza, goodbye Israel. Thank you for all that you have taught me, for all you have shared with me and for the grace and good humour you have shown to a young, naïve do-gooder. Goodbye and may you have justice. May you have justice and peace, the blossom of justice.

2001 Goodbye Vaughn
Goodbye Vaughn, though those words stick in my throat. I have so many other things to say to you before I am ready to say goodbye. Like “Why?” and “Why?” and “Why?” Like “She loves you” and “We all love you”. So I won’t say goodbye. I can’t say good bye, years from now I will still not be ready to say goodbye to you. I watch my beloved sister grieve for you with an intensity and pain that I cannot bear even from where I sit, once removed. Goodbye Vaughn, though it is not your time. Goodbye sweet Vaughn, because although the words still stick in my throat it is time to let you have things your way. Goodbye.

2002-2005 The frequent flyer mile years.
Goodbye Auckland, hello Wellington. Goodbye Wellington, hello Sydney. Goodbye Sydney, hello Darwin. Goodbye Darwin, hello Dili. Goodbye Dili, hello Darwin. Goodbye Darwin, hello Sydney. Goodbye Sydney, hello Wellington. Goodbye Wellington, hello Auckland. Goodbye Auckland, hello Wellington. Goodbye Wellington, hello Sydney. Goodbye Sydney, hello Darwin. Goodbye Darwin, hello Dili. Goodbye Dili, hello Darwin. Goodbye Darwin, hello Sydney. Goodbye Sydney, hello Wellington. Goodbye Wellington, hello Auckland. Goodbye Auckland, hello Bangkok. Goodbye Bangkok, hello Wellington. Goodbye Wellington, hello Christchurch. Goodbye Christchurch, hello Wellington. Goodbye Wellington, hello Santiago. Goodbye Santiago, hello Buenos Aires. Goodbye Buenos Aires, hello Sao Paulo. Goodbye Brazil, hello London. Goodbye London, hello Oslo. Goodbye Oslo, hello Amsterdam. Goodbye Amsterdam, hello Athens. Goodbye Athens, hello Wellington. Goodbye Wellington, hello Bangkok. Goodbye Bangkok, hello Tel Aviv. Goodbye Tel Aviv, hello Jerusalem. Goodbye Jerusalem, hello Ramallah. Goodbye Ramallah, hello Haifa. Goodbye Haifa, hello Tel Aviv. Goodbye Tel Aviv, hello Bangkok. Goodbye Bangkok, hello Wellington. Goodbye Wellington, hello Sydney. Goodbye Sydney, hello Darwin. Goodbye Darwin, hello Dili. Goodbye Dili, hello Darwin. Goodbye Darwin, hello Sydney. Goodbye Sydney, hello Wellington. Goodbye Wellington, hello Denpasar. Goodbye Bali, hello Wellington. Goodbye Wellington, hello Auckland. Goodbye Auckland, hello Wellington. Goodbye Wellington, hello Kabul.

My grandpa Archie

2005 Goodbye Grandpa
Goodbye darling Grandpa, I wish I could have said this to you before you went. But I understand that you have been saying goodbye to me, to all of us, for months now. I knew it even then, when you squeezed me a little bit too hard, held my hand for a little bit too long, and looked me in the eye and told me again and again that you loved me. Goodbye Grandpa, I understand that you were ready. But do you understand that we were not, that we never ever would have been. Grandpa, can you believe that they have made me godmother of your namesake, little Archie? Goodbye beloved Grandpa, but please don’t stray to far from me, if this Archie is to be even a fraction of the man you were then I’m going to need all your wisdom to guide me and all of your love to pass on.

With my godson, Archie

2006 Goodbye Marc
Goodbye beloved Marc, yes I’m going on this adventure for the both of us. I’ll be back soon to tell you all about it in person. It’s true, I don’t know if I will be able to bear being away from you while you set out on your journey to beat this cancer, to fight your way to the long, happy life that we both know will be yours. You know that I am only a phone call away and I’ll be on the first plane if those doctors start abusing your human rights again (if they steal your voice again, write me a note!). I’ll write you long and hopefully entertaining messages about life in Kabul to read when you are recovering from chemotherapy. Goodbye Marc, I promise I will even learn to sit still so that I can practice those healing meditations for you. Good bye my friend and my brother, see you soon.

2006 Goodbye Kabul
Goodbye Kabul, goodbye new friends, new home, new job and new life. It seems I have barely settled in and yet here it is again, time to say goodbye. Goodbye Horia, my heroine, you have shown me what people mean when they talk about grace under fire. Goodbye brave Shinkai, you trusted me and gave me the chance to discover something new about myself. Goodbye Kate, Sarah, and Rachel. Goodbye Monday night yoga and Thursday night ladies’ drinks. Goodbye to my women of Kabul, you have cried and laughed with me, you have so quickly come to know me. Goodbye Timur, Kai, Tamim, Wagma, and Azma. You have shown me what hospitality should look like and you have taught me a little about growing up Afghan in America. Goodbye Jamie, Sarah, Jeremy and Scott. You have made me laugh when the pipes were frozen over and when it seemed the report would never get written. Goodbye Javier and Herman, you have taken me on as your housemate and made me feel like your star. Goodbye Nellika, you offered me a home away from home. Goodbye Norman and Mala, you offered me your doggy trust and helped me learn to be less afraid of all dogs in the process. Goodbye Mohammedullah, Shapour and Azim, you have endured having this strange and sometimes unpredictable Haraji as your manager with good humour and generosity. Goodbye my Kabul life and, deep breath, hello Herat.

Labels: Sunday Scribblings

Sunday Scribblings: Fantasy

Peace on Earth, Herat, originally uploaded by frida world.

I loved this week's Sunday Scribblings prompt and had thoughts about it floating through my semi-conscious mind throughout the long, white night of insomnia on Friday.

But on Saturday I had the chance to get out and walk about in Herat for the first ime in many weeks and I chose that over my writing time. It was a very good choice. I had an amazing time enjoying the fresh air and sense of freedom, and through my camera's lens I saw Herat in a new and fresh light.

But I haven't stopped thinking about this prompt, and I've loved reading some other people's responses. SO I decided that, late though I may be, I would write something about fantasy.

When I first read Laini's prompt I thought about all the ways in which fantasy has enriched my life. I thought about reading "The Faraway Tree" by Enid Blighton as a child, and the magical possibilities that I imagined for my own life.

I thought about "The Hobbit" which gave me a new way to imagine my life, as a fantasic quest in which even the smallest player could make a real difference if she was brave and found loyal companions and stayed true to her principles.

I thought about my teen years, during which I read constantly - devouring books as though they were my sustenance, which in many senses they were. I read sci-fi fantasy and epic fantasy and fairy tales and myths. Sometimes I read to escape, sometimes to explore, sometimes to discover new truths. But mostly I read because it kept me sane in the midst of adolescent madness.

I thought about the years when I was at university and I worked as a "fairy storyteller" - dressing up as a sea sprite, a forest nymph or a fairy and concocting fairy tales and magical experiences for groups of children.

But now I finally find time to sit and write about fantasy, and there is a different kind of fantasy on my mind. A fantasy that sustains me right now.

Somedays I turn on the news and I feel that my heart will implode from the sadness and hopelessness I feel at the state of our planet.

Two nights ago I was on the treadmill in the bunker and BBC World news was on the television. There were stories about the massive explosion in Baghdad, and on the millions of Iraqi refugees who have fled to neighbouring countries. There was a story about the world's depleted tuna stocks, and another about the attrocities in Sudan. There was a trailer for an upcoming interview about Bush's plans to send 20,000 more troops into Iraq.

I was in tears on the treadmill. I wanted to shut off the television. I wanted not to know about these stories. I wanted to be ignorant.

But I'm not ignorant. I watch the news like everyone else. I've also seen first hand the impact that conflict and war can have on communities. The faces in those newsreel can never be anonymous to me, they resemble too closely the people I have met in refugee camps in Gaza and here in Afghanistan. They look too much like the people I saw fleeing fighting in Timor Leste.

Here in Afghanistan I have days when I despair at the lack of progress on critical issues like justice sector reform. There are days when it seems that impunity will be allowed to continue and that a whole new generation of victims will have to live with seeing the people who have violated their rights gain wealth, power and privilege while they conitnue to suffer and grieve.

And then, my imagination comes to the rescue. I watch a news item about the Police Ombudsmen in Northern Ireland releasing a report that would have been unimaginable only a few years ago. As I watch this item my imagination allows me to see this happening in Afghanistan one day. I can see Dr Sima Simar holding a press conference just like in the newsreel reading out the findings of a report by the Afghanistan Indpendent Human Rights Commission, knowing that her safety is assured by strong, professional and impartial state security forces.

I can imagine this, and I know that there are a million little steps that can be taken now which can contribute to making this fantasy a reality one day. So I find the strength to go and take one or two of those little steps.

I am also very grateful for my own current favorite fantasy show - The West Wing. I never saw this when it was playng on television, mostly because I didn't have a TV when I lived in New Zealand. But the Commander has introduced me to the show and in the past two months I've watched seasons one through to five.

What a delicious little fantasy this one is - what the world might be like if people like CJ Cregg and Toby Ziegler had influence in the White House. It's a fantasy, but one that I like to indulge in as often as I possibly can. I'll be finished season five just in time to go on leave in New Zealand and stock up on some more!

Sunday Scribblings: Idea

Kho Tao smile Originally uploaded by frida world.

"I have an idea, my dear." She said, with a gleam in her eye.

"It has little wings,
and I think,
That it might be ready to fly."

Labels: Poetry, Sunday Scribblings

Sunday Scribblings: Kissing

“Ancient lovers believed a kiss would literally unite their souls,

because the spirit was said to be carried in one's breath.”

">Eve Glicksman

When I started working for the Office of the Race Relations Commissioner in New Zealand I started to spend a lot more time on marae and at hui or meetings hosted by different Maori iwi (tribes) or groups.

I had the wonderful chance to learn some Maori language and protocol. I think that I am suited to have a little more ritual in my world than modern, Western life usually provides. As a result, perhaps, of this I loved what I learned - rituals and ceremonies to help provide a pathway through some of lifes most difficult or significant moments.

One of the aspects of these rituals that I love is the hongi - a form of kiss - that follows the formal speeches and prayers of a welcome ceremony and completes the coming together as one of the hosts and the visitors.

The hongi involves pressing noses, but the significance is in the intermingling of breath, the joining together of that which is most essential in each person, the breath of life.

Once you have been fully welcomed on to a marae in this manner (sealed with the hongi) you are no longer a visitor (manuhiri) you are now one of the people of that place. I have never got over the amazing privilege of being accepted and welcomed so completely, but I do understand why it could only happen after a moment as intimate as the kiss of shared breath.

PS: My initial thought when I read this prompt was to write about the politics of kissing here in Afghanistan, but then I read Home in Kabul's post and knew that I couldn't put it better, so instead I recommend that you read her post. For more words on kissing see Sunday Scribblings

Labels: Spirit, Sunday Scribblings

Sunday Scribblings: Destinations

I’ve always loved the expectation of a new destination, that marvelous electrical pulse of excitement as you ride in the bus, plane or car towards a place you have long imagined. I got it as a child heading off with my parents on a road trip from Guatemala to Los Angeles. I had it over and over again in my years of traveling. I can physically recall the amazement of actually arriving in the flesh and bones, concrete and stones versions of cities I had read and dreamed about for years, like Damascus, Istanbul and Jerusalem. I still get it now – last week as I flew down to Farah for work I felt that excitement of the new, of going somewhere that I had never been before.

But when I think over my many journeys it is often in the moments in between destinations that I had the experiences that changed me most. In those moments I learned secrets about myself that gave me the courage to pursue the dream I am living now. It was in the six hour wait at a border crossing that I discovered that I could find things to laugh about when others around me were overcome with frustration and impatience. It was in a day trip gone horribly wrong in the Jordanian desert that I learned that I could remain calm and rational in situations of danger and rising panic.

The boundary between journey and destination quickly became blurred – even once I had arrived in a wonderful place like Jerusalem it would often be in the little journeys, in the moment-to-moment experiences as I made my way through that magical city that I would find my strongest impressions of the place, and of myself.

But this prompt set me thinking about the one dimension of “destinations” and the journey towards them that I do struggle to remember – that coming back to what looks like the same place as you make you way through life may be an opportunity to take a different approach to the familiar challenges, even find a whole new path to follow.

“But I’ve been here before!” she complained. “Months, maybe even years ago. I should have covered so much ground since then.”

“How can I have ended up back here? Did I take a wrong turn, double back on myself, slide backwards down the hill?”

“I know this place, I’ve climbed once already over that wall, fallen into that hole on the other side, and clambered my way back out.”

“I’ve already swum once, struggling, across that raging river.”

“That time, though, I at least had the advantage of being younger, fitter, more ready for the challenge. Last time I arrived here I hurled myself over the first hurdle without even stopping for a breath.”

“So here I am, back again, having walked in some kind of circle, not making progress at all. Worse still, I’m older this time, not so boisterous and energetic and I swear I can’t face that wall quite yet.”

“I’ll have to sit here for a moment, gather my strength, gather my wits, before I can think about clambering through those familiar old obstacles.”

- Deep sigh –

“It is lovely and quiet here under this tree. I guess there is no rush,” she says “no reason I can’t enjoy this for just a few more moments.”

- More deep sighs and satisfied sounds –

“Strange, I never noticed before that there was another path here under this tree… “

More interpretations of "destination" at Sunday Scribblings

Labels: Sunday Scribblings