Insha'Allah

I am writing this from the Kabul airport. I have been gone for 6 weeks, and I am headed home (with a detour through Beirut for a meeting) to celebrate my Mom’s 75th birthday. I feel a bit tired now, but when the old girl starts trooping me around the Mall next week in 95 degree heat and 95% humidity I will be looking back at this as the ‘good times’.

The time out here has gone by faster than a Roger Clemens fastball at dusk. It has been an amazing, frustrating, and rewarding experience, and since I will be back in two weeks, there is more to come.

I have had to adjust to a world that is really a lot slower than I am used to, where I can rely on very little to work. The telephone works about 33% of the time—redials are a part of my life. Luckily, the country went digital, and skipped the phone lines being strung, which is a good thing. Unfortunately, they have two different digital systems, and the phones don’t talk to each other. It’s as if ATT users couldn’t communicate with T-Mobile users. So most people have 2 phones. Nice plan, Stan.

(I am listening to my iPod, and I can’t tell you how great it is when, just now, my own daughter shows up in the shuffle and starts singing to me. Amazing. For more on Dooz, please visit http://www.amykbormet.com/ and schedule her for your next extravaganza!!! This has been an unpaid endorsement.)

Oh ya—stuff that doesn’t work. How about the security gate over our door. The guy installed it so that both doors swing out—think about it—how do I lock the security door if the house door also swings out? The air conditioners at our house were installed without access to a plug. There is a window that is backed by a concrete block wall—the window is only for aesthetics. They put in marble flooring, then glue cheap carpet over the marble. Most of the roads are dirt, and usually have huge craters. To add to the fun, streets are used as construction staging areas, and any left over dirt is left in a pile in the street. Good streets (there are a couple) have speed bumps installed—not those little subdivision humps, but the Safeway bumps that bottom out your car at 2 mph.

Yet, for some indescribable reason, I really like the place. It has taught me a Zen-like patience. Ok, maybe not. But I am a lot more patient. I have even started saying the ever popular ‘Insha’Allah’—God willing, which is how all future events are couched in Afghanistan—for good reason. I think it could be really useful in some US contexts as well—for instance, the cable guy could say “I will be out on Tuesday, Insha’Allah”. Or the Maytag guys that refuses to show up could schedule with an ‘Insha’Allah’ qualifier. Or half the service industry (and all the contractors) in DC could use it—“Yes, I will wait on you soon, Insha’Allah”. I mean, it is much polite and shorter than saying ‘Don’t count on it.’ It seems that God’s will does not stop things from happening in Afghanistan—instead, you need God’s will to MAKE things happen. And let’s face it, there are a lot of things on God’s to-do list that he hasn’t gotten to, so ‘Insha’Allah’ is probably a good way to handle the inevitable break down. And should it happen, we shall all revel in the fact that God intervened on our behalf.

By the way, it is 90 degrees and I am sweating bullets inside a non-air conditioned waiting lounge which seems to have been built by those famous Russian craftsmen. They will be providing air conditioning soon, ‘Insha’Allah.’ And my flight is scheduled to leave in 10 minutes, ‘Insha’Allah.
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Ok---flight was only 45 minutes late, the air conditioning didn’t work—but I am in Dubai, and will take a morning flight to Beirut….All goes well, I will be watching the Nats thump the Cubs in just a few days—Insha’Allah.