Hello there.
Much to my great chagrin and sadness, this morning's suicide bombing in Kabul (current death toll stands at 40) probably won't do much to help me convince people to visit Afghanistan. It's very, very hard to reconcile that event with the experience I had in Kabul - but then again, I guess that's the point. You don't feel that kind of violence coming until it's upon you - if it was predictable, it wouldn't incite so much fear.
The eerie thing is that we drove down that exact street just over a week ago when we were there. I remember Farhad pointing out the Indian Embassy and the Ministry of the Interior, and telling us that expats call it "Baghdad Street" because the presence of so many high-value targets has made it vulnerable to repeated attacks.
I don't know what else to say other than the fact that I'm still very glad I went and very thankful my time there was safe. I always say the reason I travel is because it makes places real and that's definitely the case here - what would have been a headline meriting a 15-second skim on NYtimes.com is now so much more of a real, tangible, tragic event. Maybe if we could all see each other as coming from "real" places, we would be less willing to harm each other. Empathy, man... it's a bitch.
[End philosophical musings.]
In other news, I'm firming up the details of an offer from Nameless Schmancy Consultancy, for those of you with whom I have not shared the good news. I am so incredibly happy to have made it through the crazy, intense, totally intimidating recruitment process - honestly, I didn't believe that it would end with me getting an offer, so thank you all for your butt-clenching and prayers. Pending a bit of negotiation, I have every intention to accept, so professional fulfillment - a long time in coming - should hopefully be in my immediate future.
And in the most exciting news of all, I'm going to Beirut this weekend. I cannot even begin to overemphasize my excitement about this trip, because ever since I got interested in the Middle East, Beirut has been the iconic city of the region for me. From countless hours reading about the Phalangists and the Druze and the Israeli invasion of '82 for my ill-fated senior thesis at G-town, to late nights spent eating labneh w zaatar and dancing to Nancy Ajram at Neyla in DC, to all the crazy couture-whoring money-dropping Lebanese I party with nowadays in Dubai, Lebanon has always been the epitome of what intrigues me about the Middle East. When I used to daydream about what it would be like to live in the Arab world - back before I had ever even set foot in the region - the image I always had in my head wasn't the pyramids at Giza or the Ka'aba in Mecca or the treasury at Petra... don't ask me why, but it was always Rue Monot in Beirut.
So now, finally (following the ill-fated tickets I booked in July 2006 and then had to cancel when the Israelis started bombing the runways at Hariri International a day later), I'M GOING! It's going to be a crazy trip - arrive 2 AM on Thursday night/Friday morning, meet Bubba (who's flying in from Frankfurt for the occasion), cab it straight to the club where my Lebanese friends have a table booked, sleep for a few hours, sightsee and be touristy all day Friday, more clubs on Friday night, and then (according to my friend Walid) -
saturday we have a booking at oceana beach, the temple of superficial fun. MTV-like open-air beach resort club with people dancing and getting drunk in the middle of banana fields in southern beirut. then saturday night is free for bar-humping and goodbyes :(
LOL. Bar-humping. Love it. I fly back out to Dubai at 3 AM on Sunday morning, arriving at 7 AM - just enough time to collect my car and my sobriety from the airport and drive straight to work. And yes, I am aware that there are probably only a few years left in my life where I can keep living like this without collapsing.
But in the meantime, it will be a weekend for the ages. :)
