November 2006 – Dust and Irrational Fears (04/21/07)
The experience of driving through the streets of
Kabul is similar to that of any poor, third-world country. The main city streets are usually paved. Side streets are unpaved.
In
Kabul, the dust is everywhere. It is blown down from the mountains which surround the
Kabul
Valley. It collects on the streets and side alleys and makes its way into the houses. In the evening, the headlights of approaching cars pierce through the omnipotent dust that hovers in the air. At lunchtime, you notice the dust on your shoes, which had just been cleaned the day before. You find that the water that washes from your hands in the sink is a certain shade of gray, depending on when you washed your hands last.
When I first arrived in
Kabul, I didn’t notice the omnipotence of the dust. I had just come from the US where we hear on our TV's or on the internet almost daily about the effect of suicide attacks in the war in Iraq. Afghanistan had been relatively quiet for several years after the Taliban's fall, but suicide attacks became more common during 2005-06 with the “spill-over effect” from Iraq
.
The first few days driving to work, I had this gnawing fear that at any moment the car or motorcycle next to us would detonate and in a flash, it would all be over. We would be another statistic in the “War on Terror”. I could picture the twisted metal, smoke and blood on the streets. My fear was irrational. I had watched too many news reports back home.
Over several weeks as we drove to work without incident, my fear passed. It helped to notice that the Afghans on the street were not affected by such thoughts. The Afghan people had endured occupation, civil war and bloodshed for 26 years so they weren’t particularly worried about being caught up in an explosion. They were used to such things and went on about their daily routine. Their ambivalence began to influence my point of view. I started to notice the dust.
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