Bouncing Stars

We spent the night in Kartay Chawr in Kabul. In one of the seven houses in the entire district. There is no electricity in the district. Since there are only seven houses standing, I suppose there is no need for it. They cook with fire. They light their house with fire. Sometimes, they turn on a generator to watch tv or listen to the news on BBC. At night they tell stories about the contrast. How they can sit now in the kabul moon and there are no shells raining down on them. But how just a few years ago, the hazaras controlled the district and how they bore holes through the buildings and under ground and the destruction. It’s eerie sitting there in absolute silence. You can almost hear the echoes of their voices. The footsteps running in the darkness. Gunshots. A Distant scream. I swear that I heard them that night, a night I passed with ten minutes of sleep.

We rose before dawn, bought a ticket to kandahar. My earliest memory was on this road. Linking Kabul to Kandahar. My father was driving a Jeep. Open top. My mother was in the passenger seat. I was wrapped in a blanket in the back. They were arguing about something, but I wasn’t paying attention. I was staring at the stars. Bouncing them off of the mountains in the distance. I would soon be on that road again. Linking my present to my most distant past. I instructed Joe not to utter a peep. And amazingly enough he complied (normally, his motor mouth does not stop). Omar slept. I sat in silence and gazed out of the window at the desert. The mountains. Colin Powell had promised me a complete road. He couldnt’ be further from the truth. It was nearly as bad as Jalalabad. At times, we took a three mile detour off of the road. If ever there was an open target, we were it. Alongthe way, more random militia in pickups with Kalashnikovs. We were going south and security was deteriorating and the temperature was increasing. Finally, we enter kandahar. The destruction hadn’t missed making its rounds here either. Although, oddly enough, between every destroyed building, there was a new one being built. Whereas in Kabul, there were just the factories and the potential for the rebuidling, here, it was taking place. We photographed it all. Things were on the up. We got off of the bus and Joe finally was able to speak. We knew that if nothing else, if there was any trouble, we would ask the cops to take us to the Governor’s compound. And that is exactly what we ended up doing because the heat was too damn intolerable for anything else. I had been instructed to tell the guards at the gate I was Engineer A’s son and he was expecting us. They seemed to jump off of their seats when I mentioned this. They led us to a courtyard where the old man was in some conversation with the governor and some US Army full bird colonel. He called me over as soon as he saw me and they all turned to me and I felt bad for interrupting whatever seemingly official meeting they had, but then the governor hugs me and calls me some bad name (a sign of affection and closeness in the culture), and we are told to go to our rooms until he is done.

Our rooms. I thought we would be staying with family, but it turns out we are the governor’s guests at his compound. The three of us are led to individual rooms designated for the Ministers of Afghanistan. I get the Defense Minister’s room. Omar the Education. Or some such combination. Air conditioning. Normal toilets (up until now, we had only seen the Afghan style toilets….in other words, the lack thereof). We clean up and are….summoned to the dining chambers.

And we are then led to a huge chamber with large beautiful and ornate dining tables in a hall made to feed a 60 person working lunch. Pops comes in and trays of food are brought to us. Pepsi. Rice. Fried okra and fried eggplants. Chicken and Lamb. He sits and watches us eat. We are famished by this time. While he asks us about our trip, a colonel comes in to give him a report. At this point, I start to notice the way he is being treated by people here. I have a full bird Afghan colonel standing at attention while speaking to him. When Pops is finished with him, the colonel does an About Face and exits crisply. Attention and About Face are military movements one conducts around superior officers. Then we need more soda and I notice the six wait staff standing at attention behind us, ready to jump at his beckon call. And they do. I’m silenced. I feel intimidated. And I want to make sure Joe catches it all. I am hoping Joe sees my father and is impressed.

We finish and are led back to our rooms by the servants to nap. I do not complain. The trip that should have been six hours has been stretched again to ten and my eyelids are heavy and I dream of stars and mountains in the night.

Belly of the Whale

There are many sections of this journey. Many stories. Many angles. I will try to describe using only one, but already I've complicted things, woven a tangled web of angles, viewpoints, stories, that I'm afraid I'm just going to talk and whatever forms forms.

On June 29th, we left Peshawar for Afghanistan. Before my story moves forward, I want to offer my thoughts on Pakistan. I have had the opportunity to see all four major provinces on this trip. It is without a doubt the dirtiest, filthiest, most corrupt place i could possibly imagine. Imagine a street. Imagine yourself in a car driving down this street. Imagine five police officers standing about 100 meters apart from eachother as you drive down this road. Imagine it is bright daylight. Imagine yourself having to stop for each of these cops, handing them a 20 dollar bill, then allowed to proceed to the next cop for the same thing. this was not an anomaly. i swear our cabdrivers and guides have a stash of money set aside for bribing. a separate pocket just for it. i have never in my life been more proud of the american police (inspite of its few bad apples). i hate this fucking country.

We leave and drive through an incredibly perilous and windy road to get to Torkham at teh afghan border. we bribe the authorities to stop searching us over and over again. They are doing everythign they can to delay me and all I can think about is stepping foot onto the land I've been dreaming about for so long. At one point, I'm find myself laughing out loud it has become so damn frustrating. My emotions are rising to unprecedented levels and I am so damn close and yet, I can't just run across, go running past the stinking soldiers and touch base. My cousin Omar is doing all tht he can to gain our passage. he can see my mental state deteriorating. Meanwhile, Joe is anything but inconspicuous with his ten camera bags and cables and wires, inviting stares from all directions. Joe's inability to reply in Pashto or Farsi at the border brings more questions and searches until it was finally time. We were cleared. We all got our exit stamps.

Then, the world vanished for me. The border, the machine guns, the noise, my companions. I was a mere few steps from Afghanistan and there was nothing in my way now. No corrupt Pakistn, no ocean, no war, nothing. I could vaguely make out Omar saying something to me, but I was oblivious by now. I was walking. Forward. I was no longer directing my limbs to move. I was simply letting myself be pulled by the magnetic pulses, step by step, and then, there was sight and sound again, all came gushing back and there was Omar asking me how it felt. To be on Afghan soil again. I didn't reply. I was awestruck. I dont know if I can describe it.

Imagine a fish returned to water. Is that too cliche? Then imagine water returned to a fish. allowed to saturate it. imagine a leaf removed from the ground where it lies, decaying, and returned to a tree. or, throw a glass of cold water into the sea. or let your breath out, exhale, and the air returns to the atmosphere. all i have is analogy. and i don't think it's enough. I was crying. Maybe that is enough.

We rented a taxo to take us the six hours to Kabul. The price was 2500 Afghanis if we wanted AC. 2000 without. I think we were being jipped, by I didn't care. I would have paid him 5000. We load our bags and set out. i had no idea what i was in for. village after village, town after town, building after building, what we saw was near complete destruction. Jalalabad was being rebuilt. A new house amid ten destroyed bullet ridden buildings. Entire roofs collapsed under the bombs that rained down on the city. The road is in shambles. Craters where bombs and tanks and mines have exploded made a six hour journey take 10 hours. Just beyond Jalalabad, we got a flat tire, and our driver changed it within ten minutes in the 110 degree weather. Bottled water was abundant. Marinda orange soda and Pepsi. Farmers were tending their fields around mine fields. Children played in rice paddies, or they carried 70 pounds of weight to make money, or they begged for anything we could give them, or they rubbed the stumps of their limbs, victims to the beautiful butterfly bombs the Soviets were so gracious to flood the country with.

During this leg of the trip, Joe had set the camera settings incorrectly, so I apologize if the pictures come out dark. Blame my professional photographer on that one. I think I'll fire him.

This trip would not be what it was without things going wrong every step of the way. I knew security was relatively decent in the cities, but along rural routes like we were on, there was no government presence. I knew that at anytime, our car could come under fire, be pulled over, searched, and then all is lost. Our fears are highlighted as we pass the bus that two days prior had been blown up, teh bus that carried ten UN female registration workers to their deaths. Everywhere we turn, there are men in pickups or walking the streets carrying AK-47s. How could we know if they are friend or foe? We had no way of knowing. We kept to our selves around them, kept Joe silent while Omar and I spoke louder than we normally would so they knew we were one of them.

But I have to mention that inspite of this, I have never felt safer in my life. Being around my own. I wanted to rush out and hug them all. the lost limb children, the decaying scarred old warriors, the invisible women still buried under the chawdarees.

For lunch, we pulled over by the river a ways off the road, set out my patoo, and ate boiled eggs and smoked cigarettes and listened to the river hiss at us. I dunked my head in the cold clear water. It was the sweetest moment of my life.

We passed orchards, destroyed tanks and APCs, donkeys and mules and horses, goats and starving children, old brick factories, tractors pulling people, pigeons and craters, tank shells as flower pots. but always, only men. never a woman's face. i dont know what our women look like. if they are beautiful or ugly. if they seem intelligent or crazy. all i could see was a silhouette. a shadow. all the beauty i see is drowned out and silenced by this. i tried to gaze at the august mountains again to rekindle my awe, but it was gone. and i'm not sure if i can get it back for this land.

the closer we got to KABUL, the worse the road got. Then, we were in the city, the town of my birth, the city in which i would have found it all. and like the ghostlike silhouttes of women, so was this city. nothing remained. nothing. i drove by my old blocks. the rubble was all that remained. no one has been able to afford rebuilding there yet (except the powerful thieves who are in power now), so it is as it was. barren. dry. dusty. lonely. rubble. nothing more. all i wanted to do was lock myself inside any of the rooms that arent' there now, lock myself in and pretend i hadn't seen it. any of it. let alone think about the moment of the crumbling. because when the walls were coming down, there were people living in them. i asked them. those on the streets, sittign on the remnants of their homes. they were all here. with their families. who are now half of them dead. while Masood and Hekmatyar and Dostum and others cut the city to pieces. Killed thousands and thousands and tens of thousands of the civilians as they vied for power.

Masood's pictures were as prevalent in the streets as were the bullet holes. The one who brought a quarter of the destruction on the city. HIs pictures and posters all over the city. An entire city intersection dedicated to him. Because his lieutennts are in charge. i would like to think it's a reminder of who did this to the city. so that they remember. and curse his and others' names that were like him. the power hungry bastards that made nearly as many orphans and widows and widowers as the Russians did. it wasn't the Russians that destroyed this land. This city. It was these people. Who now run the country.

We went on a night out in Kabul. There was a small portion of it still standing. I drove by the Kabul University where I imagined my parents first saw eachother on the portion i stood on. We were accosted by a local militia soldier who nearly confiscated all of our tapes if it hadn't been for a guide that was with us, Omar's friend Hammeed Jawn. We then drove to a kabul tea house and again, I imagined my mother or father or any of the diaspora sitting on any given night, sipping tea, flirting, smoking cigarettes, talking about a river they wanted to see or the upcoming exams. I imagined my friends and siblings and I doing the same. Talking in the Kawbully accent. "Kah tay mah kee may ra sah baw?"

It was overwhelming. A dream. It was my lucid dream. The entire day. I could not believe it. Even as I sipped kawbul tea. Even as I heard a radio playing an old Ahmad Zaher song from a nearby store.

He, I

HE

He is bewildered by the heat. He can't recall it. I'm forced to remind him of 1996 when in Desert Battle Dress Uniform, he baked in the Saudi and Iraqi sun, oiling his M16A2 Assault Rifle to frictionless status. I remind him of the copy of Faulkner's "The Sound and the Fury" with the missing cover, one of ten books his sister had sent him from the world shetlered by war, the sheltering being his own body and the adroit fingers that were able to read the chocolate sweet sentences of Faulkner while maximizing the killing capability of his rifle. He says he wants to forget he was part of that war machine. I remind him that we contain multitudes and that he is as much still soldier as he is pacifist, although he argues that the two are not meant for eachother and I have to disagree, that they are, that in fact, you cannot have one without the other, that even the greatest pacifists were warriors at heart. He tells me that a warrior is not led by others, although i have to disagree with him again, because a warrior is a leader, and one of the leadership principles is to be able to follow. Another is to be able to lead. Another is to be able to navigate using moonlight. Another is to be able to kill proficiently, "One shot, one kill" was his motto. He remembers, I can tell he does. But he hides his face and takes a wiff of the rotting meat in the bazaars of Peshawar. Later, he talks about the name of his rifle. He reminisces about the small ammo cases and that he loved them so much more than the bigger ones because not only were the smaller ones lighter, but they killed less people.

They know him around here. They know him well. He meanders among them like the distance, the long away journey they wanted to be on and could not. He is that journey. When a child tugs at his sleeve now, he doesn't flinch.

I

I went for another outing today. I got the entry visa into Afghanistan. I swear to god (whosever will take me home safely) that the taxi drivers are Japanese Kamikaze pilots of the second big one, reincarnate, ignorant of their war, simply bullets with a death wish. I can't watch the roads while they drive. I instead try to make sense of the signs. Signs that read "If God is not with us, then who is?" These are official street signs. They are posted to give hope, I would imagine. I think of all things, the lack of hope is most prominent here. Even more so than the smells of rotting fruit and meats.

In the consulate, I went from station to station until I met the ambassador. A picture of Karzai behind him, surrounded by calendar days. I wonder if he counts the number of days before he has to resign himself to death. I know my grandmother does. She asked again how old she was and asked if it wasn't enough. She thought maybe she had done this long enough and maybe it was now time to die. I didn't know how to reply, so I asked her if she wanted the fan on. She didn't. Anyway, I digress. The ambassador spoke to me as old friends would. "You live in California, don't you?" I hadn't told him yet, but i modestly replied "Yes, sir." "HOw has your journey been so far, son?" "It's been as good as can be, sir, thank you for asking." He tells me to jump ahead in the line and hand him my paperwork and I do and he signs and stamps and tells me to have a safe remainder of my journey and I take my passport and exit his office. An Afghan police officer tells me my money is about to fall out of my pocket and then we chit chat about the drab color of Army uniforms and I'm off again. He spoke in Farsi. The Ambassador spoke in Pashto.

And so it has come.

Retire now to your tents and to your dreams. Tomorrow, we enter the town of my birth. I want to be ready.

cheap imitation

I'm in a holding pattern here. I need to get a VISA to get into the land of my birth. i can't get there until monday. so i wait. and eat. and sweat. and get restless. if this were an island and i was a native, you could hear the wardrums beating. they are pounding.

everything is an imitation here. my arms. clothes. my cousin. the style of his hair. of his flavor savor. they imitate us. and the funny thing is I imitate him. i watch him and listen to him and try to pick up on his speech patterns, his accents, the acquisence to the madness here. what strange links they have to us. my cousin knows britney by her first name. and she wants to play "yellow submarine" on a piano. it seems everywhere i go, people tell me of the wild child that was my father. that he gave everyone hell. i almost dont' want to hear any more that i am him all over again. i would like to think i am not. the electricity is unstable here. so is my voice. so is the getting into any rhythm. i almost want it all to end. skip time again. maybe if i run eastward. but then, i would be running from where i'm going. tomorrow will be the day when i can sit the night and say to my travel companion, "tomorrow we enter the town of my birth, i want to be ready". the old morrison line we've been reciting for nearly a decade now. i mentioned once to him that i wanted to say that some day if i ever returned to the old country. he immediately replied that he would accompany me. we repeated this over the years. tomorrow may be the lyric in fruition. the only thing is that now, if i say it, it will end. it will become a thing of the past. i would add an "ed" to the mention of it. and when that happens, what remains? will i find some other poem to try to fashion my life around? maybe bukowski's "living through a series of small stories for death to come." or maybe napoleon's "i am driven towards an end i do not know. when i have reached it, the smallest atom will suffice to shatter me. until then, not all the forces of mankind can do a thing against me." i like the bukowski one better.

it is very strange to be two people. to be yourself and to at the same time be your past. i'm not both simultaneously. i am one and then the other. never do they overlap. juxtapose. although once, today, when i was trying to learn the attan, i felt some jolt run through me, and i was, i think for a brief instant, both then and now. although, that felt more like what would be, instead. the future.

joe frightens me. he is unstable. if woken from a sleep, he acts very strangely. if ever comes a time when there is danger, i pray for our safety. maybe "pray" is not the right word by me, but the sentiment is understood, i hope. i woke him today for example. he looks at me, smiles and giggles like a little girl being tickled, kicks his feet up in the air, and says, "no, come on, are you serious?". so i played along and said, "of course not, but did you get the donkey?" he stopped giggling, sat up, giggled one last time, and shook my hand. i'm afraid for both of us.



there is a problem. a few actually. for one, it's three in the morning and i can't sleep. for another, my email is down. i can't access it. i am cut off from my world. my other world. how strange to be so isolated. i mean, being here, i still felt like there was hope, but now, what do i do?

Therapy

I’ve divided into three. It just came naturally. Please excuse any pretentious or emotional or melodramatic prose I might attempt.

HE

He began the chronicling of the journey uneasy, unorthodox, nervous, agitated because of the answers that lie ahead. It all of course runs the risk of getting complicated because answers implies questions, and if truth be told, he hates questions more than answers. At least with the latter, there is closure. There is a finality and closed ended ness that’s comforting on nights like this that are also days, the one hand two hand switching of international travel. He’s moving eastward, and that seems to be the direction of time. Tick tocks pound in on easterly motion. Winds of change, if time has winds, move forward then. Always forward. Would then international travel increase the rate of healing?

But then, he has already asked another question, created a sentence in need of a mate, an answer. These two give each other existence. Is he then the same as a question, a seeker after an elusiveness that by its very definition must never be reached, found, seen, nor heard? He wonders if this fruitless search is not asking too much of him, and is appalled that he has asked another question.
He is still nervous, uneasy, agitated. And afraid. He is going home, after all.

YOU

You are seated on a stone that was a house that is a stone that bore bones and whispers and torn shirts passed down from some older brother or sister to a younger one.

I

11 am local time in our destination. Joe and I left Los Angeles at 5:50pm on the 22nd of June. They searched me. I have cut all of my hair. I am sporting a beard, mostly for fun. I’m sure I don’t need it to blend in. I am wearing green cargo pants and a black t shirt. I have a compass in my watch, a new TIMEX. Afghans like that brand. I’ve packed lightly, adhering to the one pack rule. Although the gifts I bear in all honesty have forced me into the two bag rule. I’ve just checked my watch and by its mechanics, we are easterly bound. We’re in motion, and motion is always positive, and if it’s all about polarities, then I’ve left behind what’s negative. I’ve just checked again and our direction remains unchanged. Good, that makes me easy. I mentally review my packing: 4 pairs of socks rolled in a Ziploc, air sucked out, five pairs of boxers and two t shirts given the same treatment, sandals, pen, paper, film, a denim button up (my favorite shirt). I have baby wipes for field showers, diarrhea medicine to last me a life time in case Afghanistan stills feels inclined to take revenge, a hearty vengeance that would brew and boil in my bowels. Vengeance and anger. Resentment. The shame of an abandoned child. I know even now that she is yelling at me. I can hear the groan of her invective in the creaking of the plane. The blood gushes through internal pipes, races, the heartbeat that is as much my own, pulsates loudly in my ears. I know she is angry. Everyone that has returned home brought back tales of sickness and pain and a nearly unbearable sadness, stiff and arid. Why did you go, she asks, and then injects her dirt water into my system. Why did you all flee and not stand up for me? It may be the lack of sleep, but it’s like a chorus I hear with the voices of the dead. I reply with my own echo that I have always meant to return. That if I had stayed, then there would be no coming home, and isn’t that always sweet? Don’t we all cherish the prodigal son story? But I don’t really say this. I simply apologize and ask for forgiveness. In my absence, I have paid close attention to the rhythm of her voice, and if nothing else, she sounds like she is healing even now. And we all head in her direction. We are on an aircraft, all of us, heading eastward. We are all skipping time, maddeningly aware that if we move forward, east, in unison, we can all collectively move time forward exponentially. We would each skip 12 hours. A million 12 hour is 12 million hours. That has to count for something. And maybe that’s why we go home. Time heals, and we are stealing time.

HE

When he was a boy, he also lived in a house with hand me down clothes and walls that were once stone, walls that are just that now again. He is exhausted. In the east. And going deeper. All of the food is now halal. People around him speak Pashto. Farsi. The eye colors are friendly. The glances he gets are not menacing. He goes deeper still. He is simply a man today. No longer a threat, an enemy, an outsider. For the first time in 22 years, he suddenly becomes a non presence. Except of course to the airport staff, I’m certain. He finds the rainfall on the window of the airplane beautiful. He wants to be drenched in the rain. He does not want you to call that baptism because that is not what it is. Let’s just stick with cleansing. It’s beautiful what he sees on the window. Droplets cling, attract, bond, and are gone.

YOU

You are always there.

I

2 a.m. Dubai. Thursday, June 24. I’m waiting for the final leg of the first phase of my trip. Joe is a technology and internet addict. He fiends for any semblance of his precious West at every airport, every turn. I think just being on an escalator with its pulleys and roar roar engine is enough to recharge him. I have no choice but to cater as much as I can, letting him pay ten dollars to pay for a minute of internet. I don’t’ think he has ever left the sanctuary of his life. The safety of the West. He has always had power, always been in the right, and always demanded his rights. If nothing else, I hope he will learn that these “truths” and these “inalienable rights” which were so “self evident” (let us ask women and “niggers” and “Indians” and “chinks” and “camel jockeys” how self evident these were first) are stripped from his world now, for two weeks, and that millions never had them. He is no longer who he was. Entering this foreboding world reminds me of “Survivor” and “Gilligan’s Island” and “the Castaway”, a world before Britney and the internet, Clinton and cell phones, an inept UN and waterbeds.

Anyway, I am calm tonight. I probably shouldn’t be, but I am. I’m wondering why any of this is a big deal. Who the hell cares? Why do I find it necessary to chronicle a journey that means nothing in the scheme of things? I mean, so what? The millions languishing there lose daily, hourly. Not the insignificant losses of electricity and a stink free city, but of limb and child and life. Why on earth do I have the audacity to sit and write about my world when their lives are in chaos? What do they care about art? I have to find some reason for this journey. So far, it seems vain and self indulging. Maybe what I really want to do is raise awareness. Not just mine. There are so many around me that need to wake up. They read blogs about travels. They watch indie films and discuss empty politics at Starbucks or get a Guinness with a buddy after work; they smoke cigarettes and play chess, without even a shadow of action in their bones, at the end of the day, composed of inaction under their fleshy corpulent soft exterior. Maybe that is what drives me.

I

I’m here. Arabs hide their women. But their women are beautiful. Pakistanis hide their women, too. But theirs are not so beautiful. Afghans hide theirs too. The afghan women hide themselves from the Pakistani men in the streets of Pakistan because of the gawking. The Pakistani men are ugly. and seem to carry a bag of stench wherever they go. but they all have nice hair. I’m guessing Vidal Sassoon. lots of body to the hair. anyway. I’m in hayat abad. full of afghans. with no hope. We, in America, can afford to be losers. and most of us choose that. I feel ashamed telling them how much we squander time and take our opportunities for granted. so I choose to not talk about it there. I don’t' want to tell them we have cars and beds and air conditioning and a stove. nor that we don't have cobras in our backyards. nor that we did not sit in our living rooms as we grew up, with rockets flying over our heads and always wondering which one of us would not last the night. or if we did last, which of us would lose a limb, and which limb at that. I also don't have the heart to tell them that I never witnessed the hazaras seeing some poor afghani (the hazara and tajik and uzbek word for the pashtuns) walking home with bread in hand and then being handed a piece of meat in a bag by a hazara and saying enjoy some “gosht” (meat) tonight..and the "afghani" happily trots home, opens the bag in front of her children to find it is a woman's cut off breast. I mean, in all honesty, all I have the heart to tell them is all the bad that happened to us...the homelessness, the sporadic racism, a bruised leg, a scarped knee here and there. but I find these catastrophes and pains in our life are rather light compared to theirs, so I am inclined to fabricate more suffering, although I am certain by the looks in their eyes that they know I am lying. maybe they also know how bad I feel that it wasn't my fault I didn't suffer more. we are so damn sheltered. I know, I know...we are all aware that it happens out there to them...to the others...but I’m here and I’m seeing these "others" are us. are our own. our blood. and these things happen now. today. daily. I mean I’m sure it happens in fucking Somalia or Ethiopia, but by god, I’m seeing a bunch of boys that look just like my youngest brother, some with only one arm, some with broken shattered faces, grabbing my arm and saying "yak panj kaldar dawree?" they’re asking for about a quarter of a penny. these are afghans. I’m sure a few generations back, we share some grandfather. I don't know. I am certainly not disillusioned. my eyes are open. although still only half way and wait until I get in the land. my land. in all honesty, right now, I don't care bout the other children. the other widows and widowers and bereaved mothers and fathers and sisters. I am only with these here. with my fellow afghans. not "Afghanis", mind you. that's just another division. this morning a snake charmer came into the yard and I watched his cobra dance to strange hypnotic mellifluous flute notes. it then bit its owner, its charmer. it reminded me of children to a parent. they throw feasts for us here. I’m sure they now have to ration out their month's food to support this. my eyes are watching everyone. I see them all. I watch for any unusual stares, something that tells me they are on to us. I walk the streets, although I’m sure I shouldn't walk the streets, with seven eyes open. I take pictures and film. I’m wearing afghani clothes. you could never tell me apart from any of them here. which is my whole point. some look like me. some like Esau. some like haroon. most like dawood and rayhana. we are so spoiled and secure and comfortable. shame on us all. although, don’t get me wrong, I still want my Benz. as I know some of you will use that. but alas, it is a stepping stone. a necessity. part of an image that will secure more opportunities. I mean, I believed that wali guy with his Cadillac and his big wild dog and that he was a mover and shaker and made movies. because of those very things. until I caught on. but the points is others will fall for me, too. anyway, Joe is fluent in Pashto by now. or I guess as fluent as Esau and maryam and haroon. bee bee jawn sits on a bed all day. says nothing. smiles when I sit by her. they say they have not seen her this alive in three years. they swear on their holy book. swilai talks so much. but it's great to listen to. Omar is my father all over again. not looks wise, but stubborn don't fuck with me type. They are all artists and musicians and writers and almost doctors. None of them are given the opportunities to pursue them. Unlike us. Although we squander them away. So it goes.