Alive & Kicking

So for those that don't check Facebook (is there anyone these days?!), I'm back safe and sound from my weekend in Afghanistan, and it was amazing. To be honest, I was pretty freaked out about going, but (as with so, so, so many things in life) I just shut my brain up and forced myself to do it - and lo and behold, everything I was scared about seemed very remote once the adventure actually started.

My favorite thing about travel is that it makes a place real. After all the years of media coverage and war reports and best-selling novels and Central Asia classes and Afghan Grill in DC, Afghanistan is a real place to me now, full of real questions and real stories and real lives. Sure, we were on the ground for just over 48 hours, but you'd be surprised how much you can experience in that time when you're as crazy as E/me. You don't need to stay long for a place and its people to become concrete in your head, rather than abstract, and for me that's the whole point.

We met an amazing array of people, ranging from enterprising well-educated Afghan-American expats who've moved back to Kabul to capitalize on reconstruction efforts and make a sweet buck or two (or million) in the process, to hardcore Panjshiri villagers who spoke no English but taught us the Dari words for "good" and "bad" (khoobes and harab) and then let us interrogate them on their opinions regarding a limited number of mutually understood nouns ("Hamid Karzai? Harab. Ahmed Shah Massoud? Khoobes. Pakistan? Harab!" & so on).

I'm still debating whether I think it was "safe" to go. On one hand, I've definitely been to places (Tirana, Addis Ababa, Phnom Penh) where I've felt a lot less secure on the ground than I did in Kabul - by and large, people were too shocked to see us to harass us, since most expats have insurance riders in their contracts forbidding them from walking around the city and there's been no tourists since security re-deteriorated in 2005. Both days we were there it was sunny, the city was bustling, and even when we journeyed north out of Kabul it was hard to imagine anything sinister happening. On the other hand, that feeling of security may have been one of blissful unawareness, as we later found out that kidnappings are routinely conducted in some of the areas we had gallivanted around in, and Farhad assured us that driving 20 miles in the wrong direction out of Kabul would put us squarely in Talib territory where his driver, a Hazara, would have been summarily shot and we would have been sold to a mafia who would have sold us to another mafia who would have sold us to Al Qaeda.

But... whatever. Like I said, I had a great time, and I have so much to think about after the trip, and we'll never know if I just got lucky or if the situation is not as bad as the media/US State Department would have you believe. The pictures that I plan to post once Facebook stops sucking the life out of me (2 failed album uploads in a row!) will tell most of the story, but basically we arrived Friday morning, spent all day in Kabul with Farhad, headed north to the Panjshir Valley and a village in the foothills of the Hindu Kush with Farhad's driver early Saturday morning, and then spent Saturday afternoon exploring Kabul on our own before flying home today. There's so much to say and so many stories to tell but I haven't slept more than 4 hours in a night since Wednesday, so they'll have to wait.

So with that, khoda hafez (goodbye)!

My First 'Stan?

... and what a 'Stan it will be, if it happens!

Plans are still up in the air but I might, might, might be going to Afghanistan this weekend. E is at the Afghan consulate right now with both our passports trying to get us visas, and only when/if those are procured will we start booking flights and packing hijabs (in my case, not his).

I know, right? But we know a guy in Kabul (met him through some mutual friends when he was visiting Dubai) - 30something Afghan-American who grew up in Brooklyn, went to Cornell, and now works for some UN agency in Afghanistan - and he's invited us to come as his guests, so I feel pretty kind of okay about it. Plus it's a 2.5-hour flight and we'd go for, like, 36 hours.

Crazy is in the eye of the beholder, I think.

Germany Tomorrow!

Tomorrow afternoon I'm off to Munich for final rounds with A Nameless Schmancy Consultancy. Please, whatever it is you do for good vibes (praying, happy thinking, finger-crossing, butt-clenching) do it for me on Thursday from 8 AM - 3 PM European Daylight Time, as I really really really want this job.

(To avoid confusion - yes, it's for a position in Dubai - it just worked out with scheduling that it was easier for me to do the last interview in Europe - I may have been pissed about the chick who hit my car yesterday, but it'll take a lot more than cr@zy b!tches to make me disenchanted with the desert.)

Despite my best efforts to find a cheap/convenient way to meet up with friends in Bonn/London/Avignon, it's peak travel season on the continent and as such, I'm forgoing the weekend in Europe and heading straight back to DXB after the interview - so for those keeping track, that's 6.5 hours to Munich, 25 hours on the ground in Deutschland, and 6.5 hours back to Camelville.

There aren't enough trashy magazines in the world. Auf wiedersehen!

Reprehensible

I got hit-and-run in traffic this morning. By a local woman. In a white Range Rover Sport Supercharged. With the license plate "480" (in other words - the plate was more expensive than the car, and that ain't a cheap car).

The best part was she totally did it intentionally - I had been trying to get her to let me over earlier, and this made her mad for some reason (she actually rolled down the window and was yelling at me in Arabic), and then we ended up next to each other in traffic a couple minutes later. When the light changed, I had more space to move forward than she did, which she didn't like, so she cut the wheel about 90 degrees and gunned forward to try and hop over into my lane ahead of me, but missed, and hit my bumper instead. And then floored it through the next light and disappeared into traffic.

Luckily, my car is fine, and although I heard the terrible terrible "crunch" I can only find a tiny scratch on my bumper, so she must have borne the brunt of the damage. But honestly. What is wrong with people?!

Needless to say, an event like this dredges up a lot of emotions about living in a place that's ruled by a privileged minority who's completely above the law... but then again, it's their country, and I'm a guest here, and I'm here by choice, and if I don't like it I can leave. And I guess - although it offers little consolation - that's the way I need to look at it.

So... viva Dubai. Grrrr.

Just Three American 20somethings, Having Dinner Together at their Flat in Dubai

While dining together this evening (E and I sharing pasta, D eating his customary Sunday night post-swim practice Big Mac), we had the following conversation about a new housemaid I'm interviewing on Wednesday:

E: I hate how none of our maids ever take initiative. If I leave a water glass by my bed, take it to the kitchen! If I put a pile of trash in the corner, throw it out! If I strew DVDs all over the floor, put them in a pile!
Me: I know... I think maybe they just don't feel empowered.
E: Well empower them, please!

Once again... where, with whom, and in what situation do I live? ;)

Plan of Action

Find a tattoo parlor in Dubai that is willing to tattoo the complete text of The Rules (or alternately, Why Men Love Bitches) in a highly visible place on my body.

Go to champagne brunch and lick my wounds.

Not necessarily in that order.

With Apologies to Ernest Thayer

Oh! Somewhere in this desert land the sun is shining bright,
The oud is playing somewhere,
and somewhere camels bite;
And somewhere sheikhs are laughing,
and somewhere housemaids shout
But there is no joy in Sandville - the mourning was ruled out.

:( At work today - no mourning period. $he!kh N@sser, we barely knew ye...

The Death of a $he!kh

No sooner do I get back to Dubai last night, stay up until 3 AM unpacking all my stuff, roll in to the office exhausted and jetlagged at 8 AM, and sit down at my desk to start sorting through emails, then I hear that a Kind of a Big Deal $he!kh was killed in a helicopter crash last night and there's a chance we may have the next three days off work as part of the official mourning period.

It's always an adventure out here, I tell you. At any rate, the news and speculation have rendered today useless to the point of farce, harkening back to the will-we-or-won't-we anticipation over Bush Day back in January. Who says you have to lose those butterflies in your stomach about the possibility of a snow day when you grow up and moved to the desert?

For those who are interested, the match-up is as follows: the $he!kh in question did not have any formal government role and was more affiliated with Abu Dhabi than Dubai (two points in the "con" column for us getting a mourning period) BUT was the son of $he!kh Z@yed, founder of the UAE, and the brother of $he!kh Kh@l!f@, current president of the UAE (two points in the "pro" column). So it's going to be a horse race!

And with that, I'm back to obsessively reloading the GulfNews.com home page and sending out a further barrage of "Have you heard anything yet?!?!??!" SMS.

Only in Dubai...